Hi. This is my Bootcamp Thread!
It is my first animation try. Don´t be too strict .
Here's my first attempt. I couldn´t decide which one is better.
Thanks for the c&c.

[attachmentid=15921]
[attachmentid=15920]

Ps: Please be gentle. My english is not as good as it should be.

Welcome to bootcamp!

These are better than my first try.

First thing I notice is that on the first drop it starts with a vey stretched ball, it doesnt read right to me. Maybe it is supposed to be dropping from much higher? that is why? but I think if the drop started with the ball regular it would look better.

I think the squash and stretch is exagerated too much. The action looks like a splat repeated over and over instead of a bounce. I think it gets too flat.

Nice start!

Thank you Dennis. I think you are right. The squash and stretch exageration is too much.
For this reason I have build a new, more realistic version.
Here is it.
[attachmentid=16001]

One quick tip: don't use the default "Animation" codec when rendering to quicktime. Use Sorenson3 for smaller files. It's in the render settings

but on to the animation...

It's a good start. The ball is moving up and down but it doesn't yet have that quality of falling and bouncing back up .

This is because it is slowing down before it hits the ground. (and sometimes speeding up after it leaves the ground )

I've marked the height of the center of the ball for a series of frames to show this. If the dots are far apart the ball is moving fast, if they are close together it is moving slow.
[attachmentid=16003]
A real ball can't do that.

I've made some comments about gravity on Bob Koonce's thread that will serve well here too. Check those out and the following ones about editng the channels for the vertical motion of the ball.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=171759

You're very close; some easy edits will make this a good bouncing ball. But you gotta make the edits.

Thank you very much robcat. Your post was very useful. The new animation uses the Sorenson3 codec.
That has worked for sure. But I am not sure if the slowing down is deleted.
I have peaked the curve to achieve it. Which programm do you use to import the quicktime movie and mark the high of the ball.
Here is the new one. Hopefully this one is better.
[attachmentid=16027]

Definately getting there.
I would change the positions of the squash/stretch keys in user properties.

You need 3 key frames, one for contact, one for squash and one for bounce. The ball would be at its maximum stretch on contact, just before it hits-It looks like you have it at 0%- and then the following frame would be at your max squash value before it rebounds," it would then take a few frames before it hit max stretch again" Dohh this is wrong - it changes instantly

It still looks as if the slow in/out is not right. At the top of the arc, grab the bias handles and make a soft "D"curve to give it some "hang-time" where the ball is at zero squash/stretch, then at the bottom of the arc, where the motion is violently reversed, make sure the bias handles are close together and you have more of a "v" curve. If you do it like this on the motion bone in the Y axis, you only need to key at the top and bottom of the bounces

Chris

Thanks a lot chris. In my first animations I used too many keyframes.
So I could not use your hints. For this reason here is my third bouncing ball.
But happily I do not need to spend as much time as for the first ones.

I have added a screenshot showing the null object curve.

[attachmentid=16041]
[attachmentid=16042]

This is looking much better. I like the timing of the successive bounces as they decay.

Since we're trying to go for classic bouncing ball in this exercise, here are some items .

(This screen shot will look a bit weird. To save time what I've done is use "echo" in After Effects to make multiple frames show up at once, and then slid your animation sideways so they wouldn't pile up on top of each other. But we're just concerned about vertical movement for now, this will do.)

(BTW, you can use "Onion Skin" in A:M to see multiple frames on screen before you render)

[attachmentid=16055]

One missing element is the the contact-before-the-squash. "A" points to places where the frame right before the squash has not reached the ground. We want it to be touching the ground, it helps make the squash that follows seem like less of an out-of-place "pop".

Do you add a frame between the one you have and the squash frame? No! Just key that "A" frame so it is touching the ground. If you leave that new keyframe smooth, it's going to drag the frame before it too close to the ground. You have to peak it and adjust the bias handles so that doesn't happen

The other issue is the way the ball leaves the ground. 1, 2 and 3 mark three successive frames as the ball rebounds up. The distance from 1 to 2 (blue bracket) should be the biggest distance that ball moves as it is going up. That's when it has the most energy from the bounce. It's impossible for the ball to gain energy after leaving the ground and move faster from 2 to 3 (red bracket). That interval can't be larger than what 1 to 2 covers.

That first frame off the ground should also be already stretched (the most stretched the ball will be as it bounces up). Again , it's about this being the frame where the ball has the most energy, not the frames after it.

I just marked the balls at 1,2 and 3 but you'll probably identify the same situation happening on the bounces after that now.

Season's Greetings!!

Thanks for the suggestions and comments everyone. They are very helpful and fast.

I have tried to fix the problems you have noticed. Especially the "After Effects picture" was very useful.
Thanks a lot robcat. Now I have keyed the contact point and tried to smooth the curve. I have also tried to fix the timing problem, which appears when the ball leaves the ground.

here is the new one.
[attachmentid=16075]

This is much better. Since the ball is loosing energy, try decaying the bounce a bit more.
ps thanks Robocat for putting me straight as well -I should have thought about it a bit more

Chris

Yes, Robcat is the BEST.

I think this is (hopefully) my last and final bouncing ball animation.
I have tweaked the timing, especially the slowing down at the top of each bounce.
There is a toon-rendered and a "realistic" version.
Here they are!!!!!!

toon: [attachmentid=16140]
non toon: [attachmentid=16139]

My next exercise will be the tail ball.
For this reason I have played a little bit and animated a jumping ball that has a tail.
It is a very quick version but in my opinion you could see what I am going to do.
Here is it.
[attachmentid=16141]

Thank everyone for helping me.

Yes I think you've got it! Now that you've got it, I'll mention that this is just a formula for bouncing ball. There may be situations where you want the ball to hang longer or squash less or whatever. But it should be because that's what you want and not because that's what the computer gave you. Which is why we strive to get this exercise "exactly right".

Good job!



This looks very good. The overlapping motion on the tail is working real well.

-for much of the way up and much of the way down, segments of the tail seem to move as a locked unit. I think there's room for the tail to drag even more in spots so you can have those segments vary their angle to each other. This would help loosen the appearance of the tail

-the tail immediately slows down when the ball touches the ground. I think it should preserve its momentum and slap down to the ground faster

-don't forget the lessons you learned about spacing when a ball is rising or falling

Hi.
Thank you robcat for your help. The bouncing ball wasn´t as easy as I thought.
But it was a very useful lesson.
Here is a quick attempt on the a jumping tail ball (2).
I have also revised the first tail ball animation (1).
Here they are.

1....[attachmentid=16223]
2....[attachmentid=16224]

Hi everybody.

Here is a new one. It is a Walking Ball. More precisely a Walk-Cycle. (You have to repeat it forever )
In my opinion they aren´t many big mistakes. I am going to have a closer look at it and if necessary I will tweak it.
Tanks for c&c.

simple walk: [attachmentid=16281]

Here is another walk cycle. Now Mr. Ball is sneaking. I have tweaked some of the keyframes I made for the last animation. It was nice to see how easy it is to change the animation completely without much work.
I have needed less than 20 minutes.
Sorry. Both are at least 200kb despite of using the sorensen 3 codec.

non toon: [attachmentid=16298]
toon: [attachmentid=16299]

The walk looks really nice! I would just recommend to keep the front leg straight on the contact, and then really let the weight of the character take over (there seems to be a delay before "the down").

The sneak looks even better! Not much to say here, you've pretty much got it. But see what happens when you make the tilts on his body slower. They seem to be too abrupt.

Keep up the great work!
-Josh

This looks quite good. The tail is slapping dowm much better now. I like the way it even sinks into the ground just a hair and then comes back almost as it eh tail itself had squashed. Fine Job! I don't quite understand the tail crinkle around frame 11-12. What is that about?


I think you're on the right track but the way the first tail segment stay almost horizontal most of the time seems unlikely. I would expect it ot trail teh ball, much as you had it do in your jumping tail ball.

These are good starts. I agree about the straight leg thing, very few creatures can walk with always-bent legs. the basic walk has a halting quality to it that would be easier to diagnose if it were not a walk-in-place.

In general, I'm not a fan of the walking-in-place walk cycle. I would recommend that you actually animate the character moving forward thru space. this means animating each step separately, but it's really not that hard.

Do it the Richard Williams way: pose the heel strikes first, then the passing poses inbetween those, then the next in betweens....

Animating this way will help you understand the true motion issues involved in "the walk" since most of us walk forward and not "in place"

Hi Josh and Robcat.
Thank you very much for your comments.

I have tried to fix the "jumping, moving" tail ball but the result was not so convincing. For this reason I will try it tommorrow.

Instead of it Mr. Bal jumps now.

[attachmentid=16349]

Very nice I like hte acceleration and decelleration of the jump and fall the anticapation of the jump is good also. The couple of things I notice is that it can use more cushion in the landing (have him land and stand up then go down a little then up then stop) like a spring afftect. then you have the character landing on his heels. We do that for walks but a big jump like this I think we land on your toes. Minor things that will add to the animation IMHO.

My next task will be the implementation of all your advices. Thank you very much for them.

Hi everybody.
I have tweaked the walk-in-place cycle for each Mr. Ball animation, but a real walk cycle is much more difficult.
For this reason I will post this animation instead the old ones. You are right robcat. Animate the character moving forward thru space is harder to realise but it is the only way to change his speed or body-motion.

Here is it. Not perfect but a first attempt.

[attachmentid=16463]

Another quick question.
Is there any rig/model like the Lowman rig (maya) or the animation-mentor dude for the Bootcamp. I don´t like the IK-Joe model. I want to finish my "real" sneaking and of course walking Mr. Ball, but in a few days I would like to start with a humanoid character (posing, etc).

Thanks

PS. Don´t forget to comment on my walking Mr. Ball

A quick update.
I am pretty happy with the walk cycle.
Here is it. [attachmentid=16545]

Here is a first attempt on a sneak cycle.
[attachmentid=16546]

Please comment. Especially on the first one.
Thanks.

My favorite is the Knight model from the CD. It's quick and has fairly human proportions. Don't worry about the lack of a face, make the poses do the work.

Walk2.mov has everything it needs.
- No slipping of feet
- Good balance (he tilts ever so slightly to right and left. I'd like to see more but it works!)

I'd love to see him walk it again with flair and energy in his step but thats another take I guess.
Don't be afraid to exagerate.

The sneak loses some of what you have in Walk2.mov.
Theres slight slippage of a foot and his body remains in the same horizontal orientation throughout.

Still a pretty solid pass.
Somehow we've got to get a mind into that guy though... show where his attention lies.
Hard to do with a ball with legs no?

Tilting his head forward on one step and/or back on another with some movement from side to side might give him that sense of motivation as well as weight.

Going back to look at your other exercises.

The jumpin ball is mostly working well, I've made some comments onthe marked up version...

Thank you very much robcat and Rodney.
Very helpful. As usual.
I will try to fix the marked problems.

edit..

Here is a new one. Only the acceleration issue when he leaves the ground is missing.
The landing is not so convincing too. Perhaps a lunge would help. Next try tommorow.
[attachmentid=16555]

Wow, that's looking AWESOME!

I think Robert covered pretty much everything, and you did a fantastic job putting his critiques to work. The sensation of weight when he first jumps is great, and all the motion is nice and smooth.

The only thing I would recommend is just to add maybe one of two frames before or after the very final pose. I think the character stops a little too abruptly at the very end.

Great job!
-Josh

Agreed. It'd look smoother if the movement was able to play out the entire recovery from the jump in within the arc.

As a side note: I viewed the jump frame by frame first and I immediately expected his right leg to move out in a kicking motion to perform a flying kick. It must have reminded me of some slow motion action scene with a flying kick. Made me smile. Not suggesting you do that of course.

gettin closer ... notes on the movie.

Nice crits Robert. I'm loving your play by play commentary.

Nothing more to add. Thanks a lot Robert.

How are you doing this ? can you tell us this is a great teaching aid

AfterEffects "Production Bundle" has a paint tool that lets me draw on video frames. It's pretty primitive, certainly not like the full set of tools that Photoshop has for painting. (Adobe... that's a feature request)

It's all hand drawing, it's not like there's anything to automatically track the ball, but it's easier than describing everything in a post.

I was tryin to find a way to include audio comments and then I wouldn't have to write anything but I haven't found a good work flow yet. A screen cap movie would do it but the result file size would be impractical.

Ok I have adobe photo shop (old ver 6.0) but I really don't use it much just converting images and screen shot. So is it possible to import a quick time movie and draw over the frames? if so can someone point me in the right direction. Ok just looked it up so photo shop want do it I tride quick time note taker it just creates .txt file

By the way sorry dw007dw I don't mean to off topic your thread it's just I would be able to help more and better If I can figure out how to do Robert style of critic.

No problem Mark.
Here is the next attempt. Most of your tips are implemented now. I have also added squash and ( a little bit strech). It helped me a lot because now you can see that he is loosing energy when he touches the ground.
[attachmentid=16690]

Hey... I like that.

/me waits for the Robcat verdict.

me too.

Overall, this is a plausible looking jump... but I know you want to get this really right so I've re-visited some notes I made on the last one.

Basically he's passing the point of no return for balance on his take off and landing. You'd have to either change where his feet are planted and/or change where his body moves over them, so the he doesn't pass those balance points

The other biggy is the push into the jump. I think you need to speed the push up so that it take fewer frames, giving room for the last frame of push to be bigger. Bigger than the next one inthe air. There's just no way he can gain velocity inthe air... because he has nothing to push against. All that velocity has to be attained while his feet are on the ground.

Remember his body doesn't fly thru the air on its own. It flys thru the air because his legs pushed it off the ground. (BTW pushing is about all legs can do. They rarely pull)

It's tough to animate a character with such short legs jumping so high, but I think you're just one frame away from nailing it.

Hey, I forgot the most obvious suggestion of all... video yourself doing a broad jump.

Could you rear that far back before the jump and ever get going forward again? Could you land and go that far forward over your feet and ever get back to upright? These are things you can find out by analyzing reference footage. In most cases animators shoot themselves doing something and study it.

Thanks a lot Robert.
Here is a new version. It is more realistic. Poses are all quiet balanced.
But now I miss some of the arcs in his body movement. I am not sure if you think of such jump motion.
It is only a try. Not final.

Ps:
The acceleration problem. In my opinion when the feet are pushing his body away from the ground he is gaining velocity. For this reason the body must accelerate from the crouching position to the one when he leaves the ground. In the first "in the air" frame his body have to cover the greatest distance.
That is my position. Could be wrong. Possibly.

[attachmentid=16740]

I think that looks much better, now that he doesn't do the unlikely balancing thing. You can get away with that on a simple character, and there may be cartoon situations where you'd do that as a gag, but as you move on to more realistic characters these notions of balance and momentum will serve you well.

You're right that the arcs have suffered; they've gotten rather squished, but there's a way out of that. You don't have to revise this exercise, but I'll just present it FYI...

[attachmentid=16762]

The blue path is sort of what you were doing last time. The red path is a way to have the same starting and ending poses but still not go too far past the balance points and yet still have good arcs. We're trying to use teh bodies momentum to our advantage. Have him lean into that jump rather than away from it. Have his momentum carry him into the balanced position rather than past it.

Just a few altered frames in the paths you have would get you a better arc or more push on the jump. I marked those on the movie, with green dots for suggested positions next to the white ones.

[attachmentid=16763]

Good job! Onward and upward!

Looking good!

I think the only thing that I would add, is that at the very end, I think he could "pop up" a little faster.

Great Job!-
Josh

Hi everybody.
After a few days without a computer I am back again with a new jumping ball.
Perhaps this one is better. The older ones were to difficult to fix. The feet are probably moving but i can fix these details quickly. Please critizise the general movement first. Roberts sketch was very helpful. Thanks a lot for it.

Here is it. [attachmentid=17205]
Thanks for comments.

No reply.
Perhaps my animation is perfect and there is nothing to critize.
For this reason here is the new one. Mr Ball sneaks. A new version.
Sneak--->[attachmentid=17444]

Thanks for comments.

The sneaking looks great ...

just watch your feet shift a bit when it should be planted



Steve

I like the timing of the sneak, but I sense that he's floating in the air a bit too long before each foot landing.

I think he's too far forward of the supporting foot for too long. The classic Preston Blair sneak has the character stretching that foot out in front of him and not transfering weight over it until it is on the ground and can support it.

Hi Robert and Steven. Thanks for your time. Here is an update.
[attachmentid=17536]
What do you think about my new jump Robert. (page 3 )
I have tweaked the balance and the curves in his body motion.
Don´t be afraid. It is my last attempt to review.

Hi Dw
I echo what Robocat says - maybe if you lag the body behind the advancing foot a little more so that it spends a little more time over the leg, and then once the other foot is placed, speed up the movement of the body over the weight bearing leg.

Chris