2D to 3D fight scene recreation

Green_Cheek_Conure

Hi there

I never really animated an action scene before so I thought I might as well learn from dissecting and recreating an action scene I liked, then running around like a chicken with its head cut off creating my own from scratch.

I choose to recreate a fight scene from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood.

It's a really challenging and fun shot to work on, and any feedback is appreciated!

Synchsketch link to original reference video and current and past version of 3D animation:
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/136289#233022

Green_Cheek_Conure

To add a bit more info on this shot

All the side characters are still in block.

The main character is only halfway threw 1st spline pass.
The 1st and few of last poses I have on the main character are created from myself trying to come up with a way to loop the fight animation(They're really lacking and I'm certainly looking to improve em before I start splinin em)

I plan to really push and work on this shot. And hope by the end its view able and acceptable to be watched in every angle, and not just a single camera angle.

The biggest problem I have with my shot atm is the feel of impact! I'm really looking forward on advice on that aspect.

The shot is quite a bit longer then the reference as I felt the original reference didn't have enough frames in their own animation after more study. Which in hence makes the movements and action a bit longer in my version.

Green_Cheek_Conure

New update posted

Hito

I think you're hitting the poses on the mark. But you are adding considerable frames to the actions and that maybe what's taking away the feel of impact. take for example the action from handstand to kick at frame 53~58 in the ref, that same action takes 48~56 frame in v2 of the 3D version, considerably longer. another example, your split drop kick takes 22 frames vs 15 in the ref. It doesn't help that the animation is very very skimpy in actually drawn frames, it repeats identical frames  for various durations in order to achieve the desired timing. There are practically no inbetweens. Not the ideal ref material. Might be better to try a shorter segment and match the ref frame to frame, treat each new drawing in the ref as a keyframe. Only add breakdowns after you've matched the ref's timing with the keyframes.

Green_Cheek_Conure

Hito said:

I think you're hitting the poses on the mark. But you are adding considerable frames to the actions and that maybe what's taking away the feel of impact. take for example the action from handstand to kick at frame 53~58 in the ref, that same action takes 48~56 frame in v2 of the 3D version, considerably longer. another example, your split drop kick takes 22 frames vs 15 in the ref. It doesn't help that the animation is very very skimpy in actually drawn frames, it repeats identical frames  for various durations in order to achieve the desired timing. There are practically no inbetweens. Not the ideal ref material. Might be better to try a shorter segment and match the ref frame to frame, treat each new drawing in the ref as a keyframe. Only add breakdowns after you've matched the ref's timing with the keyframes.

I see that's really sound advice. 

My original fear that made me decide to make the actions take longer in the 3D version was the readability. I thought it would be harder to read such fast paced actions in 3D compared to 2D. But as you say that seems not to be the case, and giving the timing on those parts a do-over is definitely on my to-do list!

On the second note.

I did realize pretty quick that the reference is pretty great for key poses, but pretty bad for the exact timing and the exact spacing of the actions. Guess I gotta stop being lazy and dive deeper in the web to find reference to match these actions from other sources, haha.

Thanks for the guidance Hito, it's always greatly appreciated!

Archanex

I think you should take Hitos advice and match your ref frame per frame. I think you'll be surprised at how well it actually does work in 3d, then you can experiment with adding in a frame or two of inbetweens here and there once you've copied the reference exactly

Green_Cheek_Conure

New Update, V3 out.

What I done
-Have whole animation on main character splined now.
-Loops properly
-Followed Hito's advice and speed up allot of my actions(less frames to the action, more to anticipation, and finished pose of action)
[Skipped editing frames on split landing action as I decided it actually looks and feels better with more frames personally]
-General cleaning up on spacing of frames
-General cleaning up on shape of body(Cleaning some deformations,making a more pretty body)

What I'm aiming to do before next update
-Clean and perfect Graph editor as much as I can(Changed proper motions to linear, make em into prettier curves, etc)
-Do micro adjustments to body shape, to make as pretty silhouettes of the body as possible(Decided to stick with this camera angle, and will adjust body shape accordingly to it)
-Maybe add a few more smear poses.
[Couldn't think of any more to add, would love some ideas on where to place more smear frames and how they should be smeared!]
-Gonna try an idea of inserting multiple versions of the main rig, lowering their transparency and repeating the animation 1 too 3 frames behind of the main rig, on certain faced paced actions(Idea is somewhat similar to the pointer trails some people have on their mouse, if you know what i mean).

AnthonyAnimation

Cool study! At first glance I still think there are areas that are too slow and don't have enough pop. One thing I had a problem with when I started animating was giving the audience enough credit. What I mean is- if you animate an anticipation and follow-through well enough the audience will fill in the gap of action in between. So try to avoid adding too many frames.

With quick actions arcs and strong poses (silhouettes) are key. Because there so many characters on screen try changing the colors of the model, it may help with readability. In general, to have a hit feel more impactful, you don't want to show the frame where the fist actually meets the face. Have a frame before and a frame after.

F50-70 there is a lot of movement and change in silhouette that is hard to keep track of. To help- I would track the center of gravity and pay attention to the spacing and arcs.

F86-90 There is little antic here for such a big move and then there is a slow-in before she kicks. It takes away from the momentum and removes that impact you are looking for. It also doesn't help that there are three characters overlapping here so the poses are hard to read.

Besides those two parts the whole thing feels like it's .75x speed to me. I think it's great to reference and study material, but 300 frames is a lot. I would recommend picking a chunk that is more manageable, then really pay attention to the style and fundamentals. Once you have that one section down, the things you've learned will make the rest of the piece easier.

Hito

-Gonna try an idea of inserting multiple versions of the main rig, lowering their transparency and repeating the animation 1 too 3 frames behind of the main rig, on certain faced paced actions(Idea is somewhat similar to the pointer trails some people have on their mouse, if you know what i mean).

Try the ghosting options in Maya; or try bhghost for Maya http://www.graphite9.com/MayaDownloads.html. should be easier than manually setting multiple copies of the mesh and offsetting the frames.

Green_Cheek_Conure

Thanks for the super detailed advice AnthonyAnimation.

Yea as a junior there's a huge amount of things I need'a properly learn!
Lemme go threw your advice and make sure I properly understood it.

I should kill allot more of the action's frames even further and try to recognize and accentuate the points that say "I just did/will do a super fast action". And the idea of letting the audience fill in the gaps on the animation is still a very new one to me. I'm still in the newbie mindset of what you see is what you get. But a game that I heard does the idea your talking about really well is Devil may cry. From watching GDC stream, I noticed how it was brought up a couple of times, how they all thought those attack animation were beautiful even though they were just 1-2 frames each. Reason being they stated was because of how they sold the attack after the fact with the cape movements and secondary-action.

I was certainly planning on changing the colors and even spacing some of the side characters differently so they have better silhouettes. It was just those parts were pretty low in my priority list. But maybe I should do em in my current stage since they really are something that will add a big impact to the feel of the animation.

I didn't know at all about not showing the impact frame! I'll adjust my animations accordingly to follow that point straight away.

For F50-70 it certainly is giving me allot of difficulty. I'll do another pass on that and reinspect the arc, spacing and COG as you said.

F86-90 I always had trouble with the spacing in this action. I really have to wrap my brain around how I want to present this one more properly, so I can get rid of that slow-in and still use my frames to present a strong kick. Also I do plan on moving the secondary characters to better the silhouette as I stated earlier.

The last comment really surprised me. I thought it was really odd that you felt my animation were at .75x speed. But after playing with the frame rate of my animation on syncsketch to 36 FPS, then going back to 24 FPS, I instantly understood what you meant! The actions just feel so much more alive at a faster pace. I'll be squeezing my animation w.o a doubt and speeding it entirely up!

Again thanks for the wonderfully detailed and valuable critique Anthony!

Green_Cheek_Conure

Thanks @Hito. I just installed bhGhost and my gosh I wish I knew about this sooner. Such a useful tool! But one thing I am confused about, is how to animate specific  frames of the ghosts to show up then disappear.

Hito

not sure if it's possible with bhGhost. you could shoot a message/feature request to Brian Horgan.

Green_Cheek_Conure

Was wondering if anyone can direct me to a tool, or show me an easy way to cleanly re-time my entire animation? Re-timing it manually is extremely difficult since I have so many keyframes on my animation already. Would really love if there was a tool to help me out in this situation!

_adamturnbull

Probably not the best way to do this but using the Scene Time Warp function in the graph editor and then baking the keys and cleaning up afterwards could work as a quick alternative.

Time Warp:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-32296732-723B-457F-88EB-681A2965ED3E-htm.html

Useful Script:
http://www.toadstorm.com/blog/?p=206

Maya Bonus Tools also has a way to time warp specific curves rather than the whole scene.

Time Warp specific Objects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFf0DUmF8N0

Or just select all curves and retime in the graph editor using the 'Re-time Tool)

Re-Time Tool:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/Maya/files/Retime-Tool-htm.html

Hope some of that helps!

Green_Cheek_Conure

I actually ended up retiming it threw the in-built time warp and cleaning it up manually yesterday as you said! But still thank you for sharing these tools!

Green_Cheek_Conure

Another update

-Put a bit of colors on characters
-Speed up whole animation(Cut off almost 100 frames)
-Cleaned up graph editor by adjusting proper lines to linear and cleaner spline shape
-Cleaned up graph editor from brocken and squished micro frames from shorting animation
-Made new type of loop action for the shot
-Cleaned Org F50-70 sequence even more
-Org F86-90 prolonged antic a bit more
-Cleaned body shape a bit 
-Added more frames on side characters for contact poses(Animation on the is still very low and jancky)

I also attempted on multiple styles of ghosting but nothing really seems to be working or looking acceptable. If any of you have recommendations would be highly appreciated!

DellBarnes101

I'm a Huge FMA fan and this a great study. Impact seems to be the huge challenge in making the jump here. It looks like they are adding camera shake in at each hit frame and maybe holding those frame a bit longer. It might be a question of camera work more than animation. The smears also help give the amount of visual information that is need in the anticipation while not bloating the timing. This is an extremely hard thing to replicate in 3D, and I commend you on this study cause I'm certainly not skilled enough to take it on! So far it looks very good though!

Green_Cheek_Conure

@DellBarnes101

Thank you! It's a crazy hard shot to make at my current level, but the crazy fun in working on it makes up for that haha!

I did notice the intense camera shakes but I wanna be able to sell my animations w.o relying on that. If you gotta rely on the camera to convey your weight then your not  weighing your animations as good as you can(someone feel free to correct me on that comment). 

I do certainly plan on at least testing to see if the animations improve with camera shakes, but that's in post production when all the characters animations are done done. And also when I'll be playing around with adding FX to the shot, and maybe even rendering!

Takezo

Looks sweet so far! The key poses look great and the in-betweens seem pretty much on the mark as well.

Personally I think the actions are speeding through a wee bit too fast. Have you considered changing the overall timing by adding some more very short "breaks/moving holds" following some of her moves to add some more atmo, kinda like you are already doing for the center-split kick part. That might add a lot and and give the viewer some time really grasp all of the things going on during the first time watching the scene, without having to re-watch it. Kinda like with the 3 sec rule for design.

Cheers!

HeXiFy

A big problem, I can see here, is that some frames are moving incredibly fast... like too fast and then for 3-4 frames, some of the characters aren't moving at all..

Green_Cheek_Conure

Finally found some time to finish up the shot, I know theres allot of fundamental problems with it, but i tried my best to make those problems into the personality and texture of the characters.

But would still love any critiques b4 I call this finish and pop it into my reel. Thanks!

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/136289#233022