Karate Kata animation

Sinistar

I've been working on this for a few weeks now on my spare time,

My goal was to mimic the Kata movements in the source video.

Many thanks to poopinmymouth for the use of his Naruto model.

Download directory is here:
http://www.trepid.net/sinistar/misc/wip/index.php?subdir=miscellaneous&sortby=name
"Naruto_HeianNidan_r6.avi" is the latest version I've rendered and uploaded.

Any comments and crits are welcome.

Oddmind

Ah thats very cool! they all look the same though.

I've been doing shaolin kung fu for almost 5 years now, boy would that be tricky.

I'll see if I can''t track down a video or two for you to have some fun with :].

Karate sprung from a certain series of techniques that served as the basis for shaolin longfist.

Tulkamir

Looks perdy good, although from the looks of it he's got some pretty damn weak technique. His movements are very soft, try to make everything look hard, like he's actually hitting something with every move. (Which is how a kata should be done)

flow3d

hehe rotoscoping ftw
I think it lacks some basic fundamentals, such as anticipation and the correct application of weight.

just of the top of my head, the feet should come in contact with the ground, then have the body put its weight on them. right now, their keyframes look to be at the same frame, so I mean the feet and the weight of the body both land at the same time.

I'm going to animate something similar in a few weeks. Also, I've thought of doing something like this with the naruto model aswell, you beat me to it!

Steve Schulze

Good start. You might like to track down a step by step guide to doing the kata, which shouldn't be hard to find on the net. Some of the stances are clearly wrong in your animation. The shoulder rigging could use abit of a touch up too.

KonamiCode

Going along with the soft/hard comments, I think you could definitely punch up the animation timing. One thing I learned from studying Wushu is that it's a lot like animation, you can use slowing in/out to give it that really quick, snappy action. You can snap into a punch, slow into the next movement, speed it up, slow in and out of the middle of the arc, and fast in to the next punch or kick.

I hope that makes sense.

Gmanx

Bruce Lee said his punches/kicks were like 'an iron ball at the end of a chain' so that they snap at the moment of contact, like a towel whipping. I think your guy could do with more snap. Also the force behind those moves comes up from the feet, through the guy's 'centre', there's something slightly 'off' with the 3d guys balance. I'd go through and check his foot placement/timings and generate the moves from the ground up. Good progress though.

Sinistar

Thanks for the comments everyone.

I've been working on the timing of the punches, as well as the feet placement. I haven't had time to render another version yet, but I'll work on it some more over the weekend and post an update after then.

This animation is more challenging then I thought it would be. :P

On a similar topic, did any of you guys watch that special on National Geographic recently? It's called Fight Science. It was pretty cool how they analyzed different martial arts techniques, and used CG to show some of the fights. I'm not sure when it's on again, or if it's going to be on DVD soon.

Oddmind

september 4th... i only know because i missed it the first time and tried desperately to find it again.

Dont miss it!!

Good luck with the work! Cant wait to see mroe naruto katas.

jer

Hey there,
Very impressive indeed! You've definitely followed the example video very carefully--too carefully actually, as you've animated some technical errors of the karateka:
(Note: I won't go into every little detail, as there are as many different ways of doing this kata as there are styles of karate, but a couple points are general and would likely be agreed upon by anyone).
1. Generally, the torso should remain vertical as much as possible. In the first move in particular, the character appears to be leaning forward. This is an error.
2. When a karateka goes into a stance and performs a move with the upper body, there should be no movement in the knees. Your character has a lot of knee wiggle, for example, in moves 2 and 3. In real life, almost everyone's knees move a little, but this should be minimized.

At any rate, you've done an excellent job. I gotta say, I think it's fascinating that the technical errors in your animation are EXACTLY the kinds of errors people make when they first learn this kata!

cheers,
jer