Pogo Barbarian--critique

sharsein

I did a test with this barbarian guy using his axe as a pogostick to bounce around. Is there anything that sticks out as distracting/doesn't feel right? To take this further, I'm debating between just a simple loop of him bouncing back and forth vs having him swing the axe, then step on it and bounce.  Which of these ideas sounds more fun?

Gif:


Barbarian rig by Truong: https://truongcgartist.artstation.com/projects/e9KJ6
Axe texture by Isaiah Banks: https://www.artstation.com/ibanks3d
Axe animaton/model/rig by me.

MattiasG

Hi! 
For me, I feel like there is a bit of too little anticipation going on before he jumps with the pogostick. But I mean, it is hard to feedback on this due to that he loop snaps back to the grid. 

The idea with the swing and jump sounds cool. But I would guess that one will be way harder to nail. 
The idea of him jumping around would probably be easier to set up as a looping animation? 

Keep up with the posting on your progress. Love this idea ^^


Regards
Mattias

sharsein

MattiasG said:

Hi! 
For me, I feel like there is a bit of too little anticipation going on before he jumps with the pogostick. But I mean, it is hard to feedback on this due to that he loop snaps back to the grid. 

The idea with the swing and jump sounds cool. But I would guess that one will be way harder to nail. 
The idea of him jumping around would probably be easier to set up as a looping animation? 

Keep up with the posting on your progress. Love this idea ^^


Regards
Mattias

Massively belated thanks! I came back to this with your advice. Added a bit of a pre-bounce anticipation and made it loop

Thinking I probably need some sort chop action at the beginning to communicate that it's an ax.

Archanex

I'd recommend parenting locators to different points on your rig and then turning on trajectories for those objects. This will allow you to easily see what each part is doing. I say this because currently the arc of the head of the axe feels very squared off instead of round. I drew some dots on your Syncsketch so you can see what I mean. Hope that helps

sharsein

Thanks! I'll go fix that

sharsein

I made changes to the ax rig that will require redoing the animation, so I took the pogo bounce down from syncsketch for now and removed links in previous posts to avoid confusion. However I did start blocking in the swing and step onto the axe: https://www.syncsketch.com/sketch/0731384d77db/#1060223/987205

I have a few process questions:

1. I have a few points where the barbarian walks off the global control, and I'd prefer the movement stay within the global control as the global control translates forward in the world. I tried moving the global control to where the barbarian was at each key pose and then moving the feet/hips back. However since I was eyeballing the global control path isn't consistent and I'm going to fight a lot of countermotion in the translation once I'm out of stepped mode.
   
   Is there a script or something where I can just make the character walk without keying the global control, run the script, and have mostly correct translation get transferred to the global control without screwing up the walk cycle?
   
   
2. The axe switches between 4 spaces in this animation (bottom, top, left hand, right hand) and the barbarian's arms switch between IK/FK. When I'm adjusting timing, I move a bunch of keys around on the timeline, the switch keys get shifted and I end up with a glitchy mess. Is some trick seamless switching, especially when you're still adjusting timing? Is there a secret in the rig setup for props that makes passing between hands easier?
3. How can you reduce the graph editor becoming an illegible mess when you're working on overlapping motion? This guy is going to be taking a few steps during his giant swing. If I adjust the swing, that could throw off the hip rotation of the walk cycle and vice versa. What tips do you use to keep that manageable?

Thanks!

tholmes3d

To address your questions by number:
1. What's the reason for wanting to keep him over top of the global control? This doesn't seem to be for a game since I don't see another control at his feet that game rigs have. If there isn't a compelling reason to keep him over his global control, then this seems like a good change to get comfortable with a different workflow which may be what's best for the scene. If there IS a good reason for keeping him over the global control, then you have a few options. Animbot has tools to help with this. I recommend animbot because it's amazing, but it costs money (5-12 bucks per month) so I understand if it's not realistic for you. The other option which will be a theme in my answers is to automate some tools for yourself. Basically you can attach locators to the controls, key all the locators (effectively saving the control's location in world space), adjusting the global control, then attach the controls to the locators and key them (effectively putting them back in their original position). Then delete the locators. You only need to do this for controls in world space, but the basic idea is super handy in lots of cases, which is why writing a little script to do it yourself, even if it's just copy and pasting the commands, is great.

2. Animbot has a tool for this as well. Otherwise try writing a selection script which will select not only your controls but the constraints as well. That way when you shift keys you get everything. I haven't done this recently to remember if it's that easy, but that's where I'd start. 

3. Call me a fanboy, but animbot has tools for this. I usually get pretty granular with my keys (blocking on 4's as a start for action scene) so I don't notice this as much of an issue in the beginning, and then by the end my timing should be locked and I'm more working on a controller by controller basis in the graph editor, so I expect to have different keys all over there place. When I'm in blocking, the first area that usually gets really bad is the feet, because they need to land when they need to land, and often that's not on 4's, so once I do a pass at the feet I just expect my timeline to start looking messy. One thing I've had to find a balance between is when I'm pushing for better process and when I'm just being lazy. I'm glad you're looking at your process because I think that's super important, but sometimes it's just quicker to go ahead and make the timing edit and fix a few keys on a leg rather than being to precious about the layout. I'm not saying this situation is one or the other, just commiserating with the feeling of "is this really the best way to be doing this?".

sharsein

@tholmes3d thanks for the super helpful response!

My main reason for wanting to keep him centered in the global control is that it makes it easier to edit things later on, especially when it comes to copying animation. It's more important when he starts bouncing than the walk and chop. It seems the way to go here is to write a tool I could reuse for other stuff. I'll definitely look into animbot, thanks!