Need some help on on FPS animations

Pedro Amorim

Hi all.

Here are some fps anims i am doing for a paintball game im doing.
http://www.pedroamorim.com/stuff/monografia/anims.mov

They are a bit clumsy because animation isn't my strong.

So i was thinking someone could give me some pointers how to change them to make them less robotic.

Carl Brannstrom

Try to make the movements look more like "rubber".. I can make a quik animation of what I mean.

Like this

Pedro Amorim

i see what you mean. im gonna try that.
i'll post some results
thanks.

frettchen

Just like Corv said, at the moment you have basically the start and end pose and it moves from one to the other, and when it hits the end it just stops dead. Try acting it out yourself, and you'll notice that you always get a settle at the end, even if it's quite subtle

Remember for most game engines you can have the settle quite long (I'll sometimes have 30 - 60 frames of just settle at the end of an anim) which the programmers can always break out of in code blending into the next animation to be played

Also everything moves and finishes on the same frame at the moment, the hand grabs the gun on the exact frame the gun finishes rising - so try to break that up a bit, have the hand grab the gun earlier, then the gun can finish rising and you can add some settle in there with the hand grabbing the gun squeezing a bit etc

It's coming on well though, just lacks a little noise at the moment, tiny little movements and that should sort you out

NeoShroomish

Yeah that's pretty much what I said at cdg, make it a bit more bouncier, nobody has muscles that strong :]

Richard Kain

Also, don't forget anticipation. There's usually some manner of visual cue before an action occurs. A shoulder will shift, a fist will draw back slightly. Anticipation is key to quality animation. No one goes from no motion to motion instantly, there's always the build up in preparation.

Pedro Amorim

hows this draw going?

http://www.pedroamorim.com/stuff/monografia/draw.mov

Pedro Amorim

tweaking the animations so they dont look so robotic.
is this better?
http://www.pedroamorim.com/stuff/monografia/anims2.mov

MikeF

much better than the first, heres what I think could use some improvement.

-The left thumb stays really stiff once it makes contact with the front grip, it doesnt even really look like the hand is clasping anything. Try having it wrap around the grip just a bit for some secondary action.

Pedro Amorim

thanks for the reply. im gonna try and see waht i can do about the thumb.
this is kinda hard for me cause im improvising as i go since im not an animator buff.

Mark Dygert

That second pass is looking good, nice improvements. I have some tips that might help with hand animations...

If you are using Biped you can double click select a chain of biped bones and rotate them slightly at the start and stop points, to get some of that rubbery motion Corv talked about. The great thing is if you set your spinner to local it will rotate each bone on its pivot point. You can use it to do things like open and close a biped hand. (They are adding this feature to all bones in Max2008)

Example:
- On a Biped double click the hand bone (this will select all the fingers also).
- Then deselect the hand (alt click hand) leaving the fingers selected.
- Set your spinner to local, rotate one of the bones and watch the hand open and close. It's a time saver and should look like this when you rotate:


Then you can...

Off set the keys for each finger slightly so the pointer finger is the last to close and the pinky is the fastest, then you get a more natural open close. It takes about 30sec to set the keys to open and close a Biped hand.

You can use this method on any bone chain in a biped. I can't wait until this is added to max bones, no more crap ass wire parameters yeh!

Something that might also help (not necessarily with biped, because it has its own way of handling curves in the motion mixer) is the Curve Editor. So objects speed from key frame to key frame can be controlled with bezier curves. You can even use it to adjust the keys, exaggerate motion or stifle another. You can have an object start out slow and speed up in the middle and slow back down as it reaches the end frame. Curve Editor is an animators right arm.

Also read up on pose to pose animation. Biped has some wonderful tools for doing pose to pose animation like copy/paste a pose. It works great for getting your character back to a root pose so each animation syncs up.

If you are using Biped you might also want to read up on animation layers.

Pedro Amorim

Hey vig thanks for that usefull post. im not actually using biped which sucks because that thing of the hand rotating all at the same time.

did another update. added some animation to the fingers.
anybetter?
http://www.pedroamorim.com/stuff/monografia/anims3.mov

frettchen

come on well Bitmap, although I think you are doing too big a movement on the settle, needs to be a bit more subtle

What you want is feel the movement without actually seeing it. At the moment the movement is so big it draws attention to it, which is not what you want.

Also as far as the anticipation goes, you can't always have anticipation for first person anims as it can make things a bit too slow - so find out how many frames you have to work with and see what you can manage - but I really don't worry too much about anticipation for first person stuff

NeoShroomish

Much better, massive improvement :]

Mark Dygert

Looking perfect

Soon with Max10 you'll be able to group rotate around the local axis, any chain of bones not just Biped. It's going to be great.

Nice work! I'd call it done

Pedro Amorim

thanks vig
really apreciate it.
yeh. i have call it done.
im now working on some props for the map of the game.
and tomorrow i must start on making the paintball player.

making a game is hardwork

SkullboX

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Perhaps a little late, but I have to add that when rigging hands, look at your own hands for reference. The first bone in a finger is about as long as the two succeeding ones combined, they are far from evenly shaped. If you have three bones of equal size, a closed hand will never look proper. (I know your post was just an example Vig, so this isn't directed at you specifically, it's just something you often see done wrong )

The animations have come a long way, and definitely look good! If anything, I'd make them more dynamic, the pace is very much the same at all time.

Drawing a weapon usually is a much faster motion, and ends more abruptly. Adding bouny secondary animation makes your animations look smooth and easy to look at, and I'm often tempted to overdo it as well, but just grab some random object and draw it in front of you like you actually would, you have a much jerkier motion (which seems to contradict a lot of what's been said here, but the principles explained also apply on a tiny timescale). Still, the animations are nice to look at, and they certainly work very well as they are.

Mark Dygert

I have issues with the default biped hands also. I wouldn't suggest that anyone build a model based on a default biped, but rather scale biped to suit your needs.

Sure you can adjust the digit lengths to be more accurate but there are a whole host of other problems with biped hands. Not only does biped default to bad digit lengths and poor thumb construction. It also doesn't allow for palm deformation which also leads to bad grips. But that's what you often have to give up for ease of use and expanded features, ahh the double edged sword that is biped.

frettchen

When I was first learning to animate I didn't have any models or anything to animate so I just used to use the biped and got quite used to it

Looking forward to seeing more of your anims Bitmap