New to animation

salimmatta

Hey guys,

I'm a game artist and I would love to engage into animation, but before doing so I would love some guidance on where to start from? for example should I need to understand and do rigging and inserting bones before doing animation? etc etc

Thanks in advance

Blouko

Rigging and animation are definitely two different practices and they are very different from each other. I'd suggest you start by animating some pre-rigged free models from Cubebrush or other websites. 

After that, if you want to animate your own characters, you can try rigging your own models. But rigging is a whole different story. It's less artistic and more technical than animating, but some people like it.

salimmatta

Blouko said:

Rigging and animation are definitely two different practices and they are very different from each other. I'd suggest you start by animating some pre-rigged free models from Cubebrush or other websites. 

After that, if you want to animate your own characters, you can try rigging your own models. But rigging is a whole different story. It's less artistic and more technical than animating, but some people like it.

Thanks a lot mate, I will try what you told me about. Correct me if I'm wrong, is it mandatory for an environmental artist to know character animations?

Eric Chadwick

Nope. Two very different jobs. Unless you're in a very small studio or indie.

salimmatta

Eric Chadwick said:

Nope. Two very different jobs. Unless you're in a very small studio or indie.

Yes I'm in an indie studio so far and we only have 1 animator.

Mark Dygert

It's not uncommon for an animator to know how to rig.

Usually the first person that gets hired in the animation department is a technical animator that mostly knows how to rig but can animate.

Then as things grow, dedicated animators are brought on and it isn't as important for them to know how to rig.

It is easier to outsource animation by sending out rigs to animators. Outsourcing rigging also happens, but it can be much more painful to manage, not to mention expensive and time consuming.

kanga

salimmatta said:

Eric Chadwick said:

Nope. Two very different jobs. Unless you're in a very small studio or indie.

Yes I'm in an indie studio so far and we only have 1 animator.

If you are a game artist and produce assets for use in a game engine then its pretty important to know something about the rigging and animation of those assets. Even if you are just sculpting concepts you don't want to be making things that can't be used. 

I suppose it depends on how much time, money and what you intend/have to produce. To receive useful advice you would have to give information on those things.

Not having that info, in general I reckon you should start off by animating a bouncing ball in your app of choice, then add squash and stretch. Then animate materials on the ball  just to see how keyframes and motion curves are used. You can even go as far as animating the camera and lens effects. Once that's done create a simple cylinder in you 3d scene and add two bones inside it. Skin the cylinder to the bones and animate the bones so they bend the cylinder in the middle. See how the resolution/setup and weighting of the verts affects the bend. You just made your first joint. There are loads of tutorials on the web that deal with this and depending on what software you are using most come with help files to aid you with starting off.

Once you have the basics down you should be modeling assets with animation in mind, or you wont like the process and pay others to do it for you.

However if you like it and are far enough ahead, then export a (character) rig from the game engine you are using, rig your textured (sorry pior) model with it, import the result into the engine and connect inengine animations to it and have fun!

salimmatta

kanga said:

salimmatta said:

Eric Chadwick said:

Nope. Two very different jobs. Unless you're in a very small studio or indie.

Yes I'm in an indie studio so far and we only have 1 animator.

If you are a game artist and produce assets for use in a game engine then its pretty important to know something about the rigging and animation of those assets. Even if you are just sculpting concepts you don't want to be making things that can't be used. 

I suppose it depends on how much time, money and what you intend/have to produce. To receive useful advice you would have to give information on those things.

Not having that info, in general I reckon you should start off by animating a bouncing ball in your app of choice, then add squash and stretch. Then animate materials on the ball  just to see how keyframes and motion curves are used. You can even go as far as animating the camera and lens effects. Once that's done create a simple cylinder in you 3d scene and add two bones inside it. Skin the cylinder to the bones and animate the bones so they bend the cylinder in the middle. See how the resolution/setup and weighting of the verts affects the bend. You just made your first joint. There are loads of tutorials on the web that deal with this and depending on what software you are using most come with help files to aid you with starting off.

Once you have the basics down you should be modeling assets with animation in mind, or you wont like the process and pay others to do it for you.

However if you like it and are far enough ahead, then export a (character) rig from the game engine you are using, rig your textured (sorry pior) model with it, import the result into the engine and connect inengine animations to it and have fun!

Hey Kanga,

Thanks for you supportive reply. Actually one of my animators friends told me exactly what you said, but however I use Maya as my main software and of course Zbrush, the problem here that I can't find a proper series tutorial for animation. It is true that the web is fully loaded with tutorials but again I'm a newbie in animation and I don't want to engage with multiple tutorials that might confuse me or teach me some wrong technicalities, well at least not in my first stage of learning animation. Once I feel that I know the technicalities of rigging and animation then I won't worry to check random tutorials, but at first I need a source that teaches me a solid understanding of animation.

Thank you

MondJoyy

salimmatta said:

Hey guys,

I'm a game artist and I would love to engage into animation, but before doing so I would love some guidance on where to start from? for example should I need to understand and do rigging and inserting bones before doing animation? etc etc

Thanks in advance

This youtube channel help me to begin in learning animation:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR4oFFjKQKHj_fCOkBLH61w

Try first the bouncing ball and if you enjoy it and want to go deeper. You can read:

The Animator's Survival Kit

salimmatta

MondJoyy said:

salimmatta said:

Hey guys,

I'm a game artist and I would love to engage into animation, but before doing so I would love some guidance on where to start from? for example should I need to understand and do rigging and inserting bones before doing animation? etc etc

Thanks in advance

This youtube channel help me to begin in learning animation:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR4oFFjKQKHj_fCOkBLH61w

Try first the bouncing ball and if you enjoy it and want to go deeper. You can read:

The Animator's Survival Kit

Many thanks man appreciated, I will check them right away!