Dante Animations (Newish Animator need Crit/help)

Rifter

Just wanted to say hi to everyone. I've been lurking around here for around 2 months or so and finally decided to rear my ugly head and ask for pointers and help with my work.

I figure the first thing you'll do is refer me to tutorial threads and such but I decided I'd finally post here instead. Anyway here's a look at some of the primitive work I've done:

http://home.comcast.net/~brwl01/animationfiles/hightime.avi
http://home.comcast.net/~brwl01/animationfiles/idlealastor.avi
http://home.comcast.net/~brwl01/animationfiles/akimbodiveleft.avi

They're all for Half-life 1 using some primitive bonestructures and all the animation was done without rigging (just ended up rotating the individual bones a lot, especially in the trenchcoat). I'm currently an animation moddie for the HL1 mod Hostile-Intent and contributor to The Specialists. Yeah anyway, I'm horrible, any suggestions for improvement (other than the obvious read tutorials, and rig your models). Any help whatsoever would be very much appreciated, thanks guys .

graves

Hey cool, it's my old Dante model I made for jk2. It's nice to see it's still in-use.

almighty_gir

didnt know you were posting here graves :P

yeh the animations are pretty cool. i cant really crit them, but the uppercut should be more like, a forward step, with a real HEAVE with the sword, ending with the sword behind his head.

NoSeRider

I'd like to see more secondary animation.

http://home.comcast.net/~brwl01/animationfiles/hightime.avi
This is probably your best animation. I can't fault it too much. May want to put more exaggeration in the movement of the coat tails though.

You have the arm with sword bent from beginning to end. Have the arm splayed straight out, and even above the head, in beginning of lunge then let the 3d software blend the arm to the bent position......it just gives the figure a more dynamic pose and makes a greater arch in the thrust movement.

http://home.comcast.net/~brwl01/animationfiles/idlealastor.avi
This is a little static. I want to see more secondary motion in the head and in the arm that is holding the sword. If you have the arm that is holding the sword pull down and tilt the sword up from bottom a bit, maybe that'll cause symetry with the opposing waving hand and seem more natural......maybe have the head turn up/down a bit when he waves and crouch.

http://home.comcast.net/~brwl01/animationfiles/akimbodiveleft.avi
This is a very quick animation, but if I was going to make it a portfolio piece animation I'd add a few more frames at the beginning and have a "lunge" pose. That is the character jumps, but I don't see the character preparing itself to jump?

I'd have a standing up pose, then a slight crouching pose as if he's preparing to jump and let that pose blend into the remaining poses.....but I also realize the character is using gravity as its momentum, not the force of his legs to jump.....this is really a movement that should be referenced by video from the Olympics or Matrix or something.

Rifter

Thanks for the crits Nose, the only issue is these are for a personal thing for The Specialists mod so some of the stuff like a lunge on the dive doesn't blend well with the way the game works in the animations. For instance, when a player hits the dive button, they're essentially already in the air, so the lunge would be played with 2 feet off the ground . Thanks though I'll get cracking on the idle and uppercut.

Oh and graves love the model, I think its been converted all over existance.

Asthane

[ QUOTE ]
yeh the animations are pretty cool. i cant really crit them, but the uppercut should be more like, a forward step, with a real HEAVE with the sword, ending with the sword behind his head.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, think "x-treme golfing" :P

John Warner

NoSeRider gave you some good crits. i'll see what i can pick out.

1st.
it doesn't really look like he's swinging a heavy object. also, the weight shift looks strange, because you're not delaying the foot enough. when you jump, or step off the ground like he is, your leg should be fully extended on the last frame before you leave the ground, otherwise it looks like you've levitated. for that not to be nessisary, he'd have to shift his weight to the other leg more first. it doesn't look to me like he is but maybe i'm mistaken. either way, he'd want that big push from the back leg to really drive the sword

everything moves together as well. the two arms move totaly together. break it up. give the left arm a delay, or make it lead by a few frames. doing this to your different sections will add alot of variety to your animation. study pixar movement.. the characters don't even blink their eyes at the same time heheh

delay the arm with the sword for just a few frames and then bring it up... so his body moves and his sword arm kinda stays behind a little bit, and the he really fucking REEFS on it and the sword comes swinging along. it'll looks sweet. you can do the same thing to the spine for some added effect.

2nd.
not much i can really think of here. it's plain, but that's all that this animation requires. i think he bobs too much. a mistake a lot of new animators make is that they want to keep their characters moving durring a hold, which is great, but they do it by like, moving the c.o.g a whole shitte load and it's a little too much. instead, why not have his just sway a TIINNHYY bit and rotate the spine and hips, and when he does his little hand gesture, he kinda leans in a tinny bit... that would make it seem more moking.. i think. oh and i dont need to tell you that the left foot is rotating down and will be crashing through the ground.

i'd HIGHLY suggest learning how to build at least a good leg and foot rig. i guess that you're using 3dsmax? don't know much about skeletons in it but there are some good tuts i know.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/bones%20tut/Bones%20tut.htm i've never followed this one but it looks alright.. to tell you the truith, it looks overly complex, but give it a shot.

3rd.

this one'll be a little tricky to crit.

first, there's no anticipation on the jump. he needs to go down, and then jump. it'll make it a billion ba-jillion times easier to read.

he does kind of a strange heel-to-toe rotation. this is probably a foot rig problem, yes?. he should push himself up so that his leg is fully extended (withought poping of course) and with his foot up on his toe. he should spin off of his toe.

the jump is a little floaty, and kinda jerky. it looks like you have a lot of keyframes in it. that's not nessisary. some people have a hard time understanding what's really nessisary in a jump, so i'll just rant for a minute, okay? here goes:

when a force is exerted down and a character jumps, he will take the exact same amount of time to go up, as he does going down. if it takes him .5 secconds to reach the top of the jump, it'll take him .5 seccond to reach the ground, given that he jumps from his feet and lands on his feet. forward motion is more or less constant. there's wind resistance but that doesn't matter anything in something like this.

for a simple jump:

to have him jump straight up, you'd need 3 keyframes on the y axis of the jump. one from the beggining, when he's at the bottom of his anticipation, you need one at the top of the jump, and you need one at the bottom, where he's hit the ground and he's in the "squash" position. once you have those keys you can edit the feet around that.

anyway, those should be all you keyframes on the y axis. so all he's doing now is going up and down. all you need to do now is add a keyframe where he's starting and where he's ending on the x and z axis.

this will make him jump up and down, and the 2 keyframes on the x and z axis will make sure he moves forward properly. this method will create a perfect arc that's physicaly correct.

at vfs they taught us to draw a curve with a damn spline and keyframe the character so he moved along the curve. this is what most people do and it gives chunky results. to hell with that, i say.

either way, i like the movement in the coat. you've done a pretty damn good job for someone withought alot of animation experience or education.

keep at it

Rifter

Thanks very much for the crits, they're definately coming in handy