[Weekly Theme 2] Locomotion
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Hey guys, new week, new theme!
This weeks theme (as suggested by Slipsius) is LOCOMOTION.
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I'm going to be using the Centaur rig from Dota. I started on the basic motion today but not enough to justify an upload so here's just a pretty picture.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!
This weeks theme (as suggested by Slipsius) is LOCOMOTION.
Tips for embedding videos into your post - Click HERE
I'm going to be using the Centaur rig from Dota. I started on the basic motion today but not enough to justify an upload so here's just a pretty picture.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!
Replies
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The robot still needs some work, but it's a start.
@ Anthony , the video is private and can't see it
Using this DOTA rig:
@anthony Haha, nice! I love the idea of putting one of the imp rigs on top of the bird and making its body react to the bird's bounce!
Here is my blocking , I think that I will tone down things like the hands
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@ Anthony , they look good!I suggest you make longer the video
@Anthony - Nice work, love the guy bouncing on the bird. There seems to be a harsh leg snap on the bird as his legs go back.
@Arturow - Great start! The only thing I noticed was that the back feet land very flat. The front arms look great though! Looking forward to seeing the end result.
Alright Im getting in on this. Been working on this guy. Cloth/Cape needs some love as do the hands and the transitions between starts and stops.
lets dooo this!
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@heboltz3 - Nice man, like the walk so far but his hips move a bit too much when he starts and again when he stops (I know you said you're working on the transition)
I don't really know if there's a stage after this, I blocked in 5-6 key poses, moved onto adding frames where needed and polished along the way.
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@LeeMeredith - Looks good but maybe add some more overlap to his forearms so they lag slightly from his upper arms, same with his hands and head, so everything moves slightly offset from each other
@kelly.shawn - Nice! Love the movement of the pouch bobbing up and down but I think the cape needs to look heavier.
Also mimicking what I once got critique on, the wrist is a tad too swingy, tone it down just a little.
@Kelly.Shawn hey man I'm not feeling a lot of weight from that cycle, maybe bring down the feet a little bit sooner to get less of a slidey feeling and more of an impact.
I think there could be too much overlap on the hand, its lingering in the floaty realm to me, could also pose the fingers more - more of a clenched fist or arched fingers. There could be room to have the front legs just stay down for 2 or so frames more before peeling off just to give the sense that the back half of him is driving the walk - im not the best at centaur body mechanics haha so im just looking at it from a horse point of view which could be wrong
to me it feels the front half drives everthing, maybe it does in these creatures? like i get the impression the front half has been done like a human and then the back half is trailing along
@Lee - For cycles I normally offset things by a few frames so I can really see the offset, then drag them back until it looks right. With arms especially I always make the forearms lag behind by a few frames (possibly too much on my centaur, haha)
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@ _adamturnbull: Looking sick man! I remember watching a video that said that a horse walk is like an ostrich walk cycle on the back and a human at the front :P.
@ kelly.shawn : like Lee said, there is almost no weight in the character and I think it moves to much, I suggest you tone down the rotation from the sides to see how it looks . (Remember, just my opinion :P )
@ LeeMeredith: are you going for a humanize robot walk? ( just to know ), it have some pops in the knees and when he goes side by side looks very snappy ( maybe you wanted that effect idk :P ) if its a robot I think its quite fine that you don't offset the pieces of the arm or maybe just a bit , depends on what you want to accomplish with the character , its kind of cute :P
@ heboltz3: jojo! Is the anime good?
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@ derphouse Oh man what a cute character! I think you could push him up and down a little more, because it looks like he's actually airborne at one point in this run cycle, without any of his feet touching the ground. I love his lumbering feel though, that's great.
@ Ankheilw Hey this is cool, I love how solid this guy's footplants feel! The back and forth rhythm and the steps he takes feels really good on the two front legs, but his back screen right leg feels like it's lagging behind the rest of the body and takes a frame or two too long to pick up. It's looking pretty great for quick work though!
@Ankheilw: I like the whole movement and the wobble, but I'd love to see a bit of shake to the feet when they land, just the add a bit more mass to the thumb you got going
@JennyS: Thanks! Yeah I think it might have something to do with his current speed being a bit too slow. I used reference of greyhounds, and to my surprise, the front- and back legs are barely ever on the ground at the same time ;D - You have some nice body movement going, but try to delay the cross movement with the legs; So the right front leg doesn't move completely in sync with the left back leg.
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Ankheilw - love the rig and anim! That secondary motion on your metal body is awesome.
@JennyS - Great catch, I'll play with that.
@derphouse - Great idea. I tried to do that on his death animation, but didn't do it here. I'll put some in!
@slipsius - Thanks!
Great work all of you. Love the motivation and the effort. Keep it up!
@JennyS - I like the timing an the pose of your cycle. I would love to see the footfalls and the lifts be much more powerful and menacing. Lifting the leg high and slaming it down might play to the visuals of the character. Also, maybe a little more rocking (front to back rotation) might give you some extra weight to the character. Overall, great first pass.
@_adamturnbull - Sorry I'm late to the game on the feedback for your Centaur. Love the subtle motion he has. One thing I think he could use is a little more weight overall. He has such a massive silhouette, I would want him to have more heft to his up and down motion. One thing I've seen horse do is stay elevated through most of their walk and then drop suddenly as they transfer weight. This seems to happen a lot when there are riders. That quick up then down motion might give him a good feeling of mass. Overall, great work!
We've been trying to give the Mobs in the game more emotional range and personality. One of the ways that we wanted to do that was through the way they move around the world. Here are some examples of the different types of movement from 2 of the creatures in the game: Leafi and Chizzard.
Chizzard:
Regular Walk/Strut:
Happy Walk:
Scared Run:
Leafi:
Regular Walk:
Happy Walk:
Scared Run:
The full post is here if you want to see some additional animations:
http://www.lightfiretech.com/Blog/?p=122
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Keep up the great and inspiring work!
@ _adamturnbull Really cool walk! Love the way his shoulders tilt and rotate to give him a little more swagger and strut. I think his back right leg (his right) takes kind of timid steps though, because it doesn't extend as far as the other back leg when stepping forward. It almost looks like he's been hurt on that side and can't fully use that leg, but his weight in the hips doesn't compensate for it. I still really like this though, I've been admiring the subtlety of this walk throughout the week!
@ derphouse Hey, good catch! Thanks for pointing that out, I'll work on that!
I really like this weekly theme idea so far, it's great seeing everyone's work and motivation!
@Ankheilw, love those!
@Adam, I treat centaurs as a rider+horse and from that perspective you committed the cardinal sin of animating a horse: making it look like an ostrich and a man linked to together...
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shows the difference really well (even though he mistakenly calls the front leg wrist "knee"), compare the bit around 20sec with the rest of it. The elbow on the front legs doesn't move much if at all, where in a real horse it moves quite a lot because the shoulder pivot is up higher near the base of the neck. Not moving the elbow makes the front wrist look like a human knee, and that is kinds of awkward. Granted the existing rig doesn't make it easy, but this is just one of those things that really bugs me like fingernails across glass.
Got one more for you guys. Just a little stylized walk sequence:
I think your arcs on the hands (specifically the Left one) could use a bit of love, but thats so nit-picky a I can get with it.
I have to ask as well, which rig is that? Seems like a rad one for these exercises!
@Hito that video was really interesting
@JennyS I'm not feeling any weight from your animation, maybe exaggerate the up and downs, spend more time down and less time up maybe.
Hey guys this is probably the most beginner question ever but how do you work out your frame range? I remember reading 21 frames is the correct amount for a run but my anim just looks stupidly fast with huge spacing issues.
I generally make my own rigs in Maya and I love advance skeleton among others. Thanks for the feedback.
In terms of personality, it's all about the language that you speak with your poses. Poses, pushed with timing and spacing are, at least in my view, the best way to get personality into a character that doesn't have facial emotions.
Listening to Glen Keane and James Baxter in particular on the Animation Podcast (though they are all amazing) helped me tremendously in getting into the soul and the details of a character. I definitely recommend you listen to those. And, of course, Richard Williams is about as good as it gets in explaining the complexities of giving a character personality.
Other than that, I would just say, don't be afraid to experiment and push your animations in the early pose-to-pose stages.
On the timing question, I have a method that has worked well to help me nail animations early, especially loops like walks or runs. I work out my main poses (golden poses) at the 10 frames, 0, 10, 20, 30, etc. Then I do my breakdowns (strong in-betweens, drags, overlaps, etc.) on the 5's, 5, 15, 25, 35, etc. Once those are all keyed and the poses are strong, I grab all of the controls and start dragging all the keys down, from first to last until the timing feels right. So, a build-up might go from frames 5 and 10 to frames 3 and then 13. So the motion happens slowly to build anticipation. The following poses would then slide in (for the explosive parts like a jump or punch) to frames 15 and 18. That is all timing. Just play with that till it feels right, then get feedback. Once you've nailed that, it's all gravy. Adding in secondary motion, smooth arcs, follow-through etc. is easy once you've worked out the hard parts of the overall motion.
I hope that makes some sense and helps to answer your question. I don't think there is any single frame number to shoot for. Let your character and their personality dictate the timing.
Good luck! Share some of your anims when you get the chance.
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@Spuggs There is some nice weight going on there! I like the wings. The nose ring feels a bit static though, in its movement. I'd like to see some more reaction to when it falls down, similarly to the tail ring. The right leg is also missing the lift you have on the left leg. Give it some drag, and I think you nailed the weight on that character ;D
@Spuggs - Looks good but there seems to be some snapping on the wing and other parts when he pushes from his right leg.
@Hito - Thanks, yeh I love Richard Williams, his book is great. The rig doesn't offer as much control over the legs and hips as I'd like but its enough for a weekly challenge
I feeel that my back legs are so weak, I feel I don't have power over there :l ( I feel that I should speed them up when they are in the air and land sooner), going to fix it tomorrow and add animation to the fingers, head and those tentacles in the head
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@Arturow - Nice man! I feel like he should be planting with his toes rather than his heel though, maybe that's just me. Great work though!
@JennyS - People already seem to be displaying examples of overlapping animation so I'm not sure we need to do a week dedicated to it but it could be interesting, or maybe the theme could be something like Attack or something acrobatic which would give more opportunity to show off some overlapping animation?
Eagerly awaiting for the next challenge, I like the idea of an attack, if you wanted to practice overlap you could use someone like lady squidfingers.
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ref here is very good, walk cycle at 2:50. Video includes a few other gaits except gallop.
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The horse from legs are analogus to human arms. The most obvious joint that looks like the knee is actually the wrist, and the hoof is several fingers fused together. The elbow on the centaur is around the metal spike. If the front legs are treated like human legs, that point doesn't move forward/backward like a human elbow does in the arm swing, it would be as if your elbows were glued to your torso as you are trying to walk, very awkward.
Rear legs' "reverse knee" is actually the ankle. The real knee is at the level of the belly hidden under a lot of muscle. The hip joint is above, little over half way up the abdomen.
watch those landmarks in the ref video and you can see how much the elbow and knees move forward/backward. and how far the hoofs reach forward in each step.
@ _adamturnbull : thanks! that helped
@ Hito : that's an amazing video :O thanks! your walk is going to look good when you get that overlap ;O!
@ Spuggs: that looks nice ;O! but I think that you left 1 frame behind in the video , his <-- leg seems to jump 1 frame and the other no , kind of strange o. O ( I wish I knew about wyverns locomotion)
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I could probably tweak some more things, but here's where I ended up with my piece.
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@Arturow: It might be the angle, but the left bag leg seems to have more weight on the lift than the right? - And I think this might just be my eyes, but I feel like there's a tiny amount of sliding going on
Look at the frames in your video where both the left front leg and the right back leg are down. Logically, with both being on the ground and no sliding going on, the distance between them would have to stay the same. Yet a couple of frames later, when the front leg lifts off, the distance has visibly decreased.
Yours looks amazing!! It’s really cute! My only critique is that the video is too dark :P!!
@ Hirnwirbel: Thanks!!! I will make the changes to see how it looks because yeah I feel the back legs don't support all the weight or are so weak, thanks a lot for the critique and I will try my best to make it better