I renamed your thread, try to bring in more like minds. Was just "animation".
I've dabbled, and enjoyed it. Never dug deep into the fundamentals, but that does look like fun to me, if I had the time & inclination. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Animation
What specifically has hung you up?
I've mostly stuck to animated materials, env fx, that kind of thing. You can see some in my Sketchbook.
As for how far have I gotten? Well I posted this animated title screen last year.
Oh, and the spinning car.
Starting next year, I do want to my post my cartoon on Polycount which is intended to have some very expressive cartoon characters. But right now, I'm focusing on finishing my portfolio first.
Comenting from a hardsurface POV, likewise beyond animating a primative or even two thereof; Is seriously a mind f'ing exercise at best so that aside for a sec well ATM at least I'm delving into both Unity/UE's store primarily picking apart rig/anim examples of load-reload and track sequences coz theres hardly anything worth a damn written about the stuff. Anyway one positive lately I've found is that I'm starting too sleep better
Currently working as a technical artist / animator and I love it.
I worked as a modeler-only for years. Started learning rigging and animation a few years back. I think it's changed my workflow in the modeling part quite a bit. I pay much more attention to topology and how things work in general. The rigging plays a bigger part in the design process. https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2383809/#Comment_2383809
Learning animation is a ton of work but it's paid me off tenfold. I've got more job offers even though i'm really not that great animator. I too recommend The Animator's Survival Kit. You'll skip inventing the wheel again.
What kind of animation are you trying to do [base on your portfolio I guess character animation and cycles]
Few years back I too took the unknown road of learning animation and in my experience is pretty straight forward one you have a good and functional rig, its pretty much as everything else in cg you block out then add details and polish
I did pretty extensive research back then [7gb] references material and analysis of some cycles so if you are interested and I manage to make a torrent can share them with you
I too recommend The Animator's Survival Kit its pretty much cover everything you need to know [like successful breaking the joints my favorite:) ]
BTW its really fun to see your character come to live and start moving around only down side is due to inexperience whole thing took way too long
Hi Eric, yeah no worries renaming the post - so yeah animation is tricky for me, got to a reasonable level ie mainly block out as mentioned -then struggle after that with the refinement. often end up messing it up
maybe its just more technical than you would imagine
(arm swing is driving me crazy)
carvuilero, - yeah mainly walk/run cycles, but I am thinking i would have to put so much effort in to it at the expense of modeling and texturing
might take years to get great at it, not sure
I get the principals of animation as I have had The Animator's Survival Kit for years and been through it quite a bit, but obviously I don't get it enough to get really good at it.
sacboi - yeah mind f'ing exercise is about right , but I really want to get good at it
citizen_j, yeah that's my main concern, ie how many years I would have to put in to get even a bit good
I'm fine with mechanical animations and moving objects around more or less convincingly ... but skeletal character animation? Yeah i too find it a total bollock. In prototyping, which we do a lot of, there's no money for an actual animator so i'm having to do the lot, and i just haven't put in the hours to be even close to being comfortable with it. Same as yourself - blockouts more or less okay, its the refinement where it goes wrong and often backwards, and takes me for-ever to get it right
for speed in prototyping then, i use mixamo.com quite a lot - there's a fair chunk in there, but outside of walk/run/idle cycles you'll be lucky to find much that can be used straight. I tend to grab the fbxs and with a bit of to-and-fro, pull out a Max bip file from them. I then chop out the useful bits into a bit of a library, and use Mixer and Motion Flow to splice them together into something a bit more presentable than my amateurish manual efforts.
That's not the best for learning though, its something i definitely wish i did a lot more of over the years
good to hear of other approaches danr, think i will persevere with it a bit though, just try and learn more of the actual principles of animation, not just struggling with animation software
Animation would be that part of the game development that would drive me back to work as a lawyer... love good animations as the next guy, but I hate animating myself...
I guess animations are really far more technical than people think. At the end of the day its physics. You get a part of the body starting a movement and everything else that isn't active gets dragged, thrown or pushed along. Most of the times when I don't like an animation its because its not based on this simple thought. I especially see it with unexperienced fighting animations - instead starting the movement in the feet throwing the whole body into an attack, they start with arms or torso.
But man, good animations take so much time. I could never push myself to go through every detail of it.
I'm a 3D modeller. On my personal projects i tend to animate my models just for fun and practice. I find the animation pretty interesting
and.. easay in a way. I'm not an animator but from time to time i get to see animation portfolios and there are few things that are really popping out to me. First thing is the acting. This is BIG. The single most important thing, i would say. Characters are often either under- or overanimated. You don't have to move all the controllers all the time.. always. It's more than fine to do subtle movements with fewer controllers and then put some nice accent here and there. Secondly.. people are watching too many tutorials nowadays which can laed to over thinking. You should get good understandong of your tool of choice and the animation part should be still emotional thing. You have to feel the motion, not just put the controller A in front of the B to get a walk cycle. Just have fun with it. Or i should rather say - go with the mood of the acting. When it gets cluncky, smooth it out. There are no rules, really, If it looks good, it is good.
Get your key poses and exremes right and you are almost there.
I was an animator for about 3 years. When I started in 3d there was no such thing as a specialist modeler. If you couldn't animate you weren't competent.
Of course few people back then could animate at the level of skill a senior animator today has.
Replies
I renamed your thread, try to bring in more like minds. Was just "animation".
I've dabbled, and enjoyed it. Never dug deep into the fundamentals, but that does look like fun to me, if I had the time & inclination.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Animation
What specifically has hung you up?
I've mostly stuck to animated materials, env fx, that kind of thing. You can see some in my Sketchbook.
But because animation is it's own beast (look at the Disney Book: 12 Principles of animation. Or Richard William's The Animator's Survival Kit. It's a very complex subject), I put it aside until I made more 3D models and environments.
As for how far have I gotten? Well I posted this animated title screen last year.
Oh, and the spinning car.
Starting next year, I do want to my post my cartoon on Polycount which is intended to have some very expressive cartoon characters. But right now, I'm focusing on finishing my portfolio first.
I worked as a modeler-only for years. Started learning rigging and animation a few years back. I think it's changed my workflow in the modeling part quite a bit. I pay much more attention to topology and how things work in general. The rigging plays a bigger part in the design process.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2383809/#Comment_2383809
Learning animation is a ton of work but it's paid me off tenfold. I've got more job offers even though i'm really not that great animator.
I too recommend The Animator's Survival Kit. You'll skip inventing the wheel again.
Here is a good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spkK2pLEN6U
I guess animations are really far more technical than people think. At the end of the day its physics. You get a part of the body starting a movement and everything else that isn't active gets dragged, thrown or pushed along. Most of the times when I don't like an animation its because its not based on this simple thought. I especially see it with unexperienced fighting animations - instead starting the movement in the feet throwing the whole body into an attack, they start with arms or torso.
But man, good animations take so much time. I could never push myself to go through every detail of it.
Of course few people back then could animate at the level of skill a senior animator today has.