ShyGuy's ToyBox - ZSamus BackFlip Textured

[TheShyGuy]

Anyone know of some good forums centered around animation? I'm looking for some atm. Any recommendations? This site is great for pixel artists...but I need a better forum that can help me with animations.

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I'm gonna use this thread to post any animations, or toy programs I make. My plan for toy programs is to just...well play and mess around with programming + animating. I've got a few ideas, but none that I'd like to do without some nice models heh.

Anyways, here's what I'm doing right now:

OLD

Charizard, Seismic Toss

I'm working on a Charizard seismic toss animation as well as another animation for KingOfChaos over at kc-mm. These are basically just keyframes without any polish. There are extra frames just to see the motion. The transition from the rotation to throw is just temp, I did it just to show them both together.

Spoiler

I'm still not happy with the throw key frames. Specifically when Charizard's head points up a lot. It doesn't give off that pulling feeling from the keyframes only.

Anyone have any crits on this so far? Does the animation read well?

Intro, Beginning

A few hours ago, I came across this great animation thread, http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103604, which made me realize that I don't actually understand how to really animate. I've been wanting to get back into 3D animating for a while, so why not start at the beginning?

saw this on page 2

Beginner tips... Start with ball bounces. Once you've got a good set of ball bounces done and you understand timing, then move onto a walk cycle using the ball and legs rig found online.

Here is a list of beginner excersizes. Do them in order.

-bounce in place cycle. First and Last frame are at the top of the screen.
-Bounce in place with a coming to a stop. First frame is at the top, last frame is on the ground.
-Bounce across the screen with the same height each bounce.
-Bounce across the screen, each bounce shorter than the last, eventually coming to a stop
-A pendulum swinging, eventually coming to a stop
-A pendulum hits the ball, causing the ball to hit a wall, bounce a few times and come to a settle, all the while, the pendulum comes to a stop as well.

And thus, my first 2 animations


I've also noticed something about inverse(?) actions(?).

[Graphs For the second animation]

The first, rainbow-like graph is the y-position. The second is the X,Y scale (squish, stretch). The squish and stretching scale curves are the exact inverse of eachother throughout and the animation looks amazing (For a ball haha- thinking about it again, this should've been way more obvious to me)

Anyways, expect more soon. Any feedback is welcome as well as any animation tutorials or free (blender) rigs.

In the future, I'll probably take character animation requests just because it's so fun

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~Made in Blender

Criticism and feedback appreciated =/

[E-Man]

Considering that I worked in Maya, the graph editor is very familiar to me. Looking at it, I'd say it's all in order.

As for the animation, I think there is a little too much stretch in that ball and it settles down too quickly. Maybe you could apply less stretch in the ball and slightly lengthen the time the ball starts to stop at the end?

Of course, this is only what I think, so if it's fine to you, then go ahead.

[TheShyGuy]

Thanks E-Man, I saw what you meant.

Here's a new version

GIF

I also realized that since the squash/stretch was based on velocity that it's really supposed to be linear, so this one should make more sense. I also spaced out how long each bounce takes so it's more consistent.

[E-Man]

Good job following my critique, but I think you followed it a little too well this time! XD

You can afford to add a little more stretch in the ball (but not nearly as much as you had before). Also, maybe it wouldn't hurt to reduce the number of bounces?

[Kitsu]

I think the original amount of squash/stretch
the problem was more that it was reacting in the direction opposite that it should have

aka
when the ball hits the ground, it should stretch horizontally (the amount depends on the ball's weight and elasticity)
then right as it launches upwards, it should stretch vertically about an equal amount that it previously stretched horizontally

it should return to normal ball shape pretty quickly after that probably (well before it reaches the apex of its upward arc)
and it's not really moving fast enough while falling to warrant a vertical stretch there;

if anything, the stretches during collision and stretches during high speed movement are different kinds of stretches meant to emphasize different things: the first shows the weight of the collision, while the second shows that something is going really fast

okay so I think I've written enough to the point where I don't know what I'm saying any more

[TheShyGuy]

aka
when the ball hits the ground, it should stretch horizontally (the amount depends on the ball's weight and elasticity)
then right as it launches upwards, it should stretch vertically about an equal amount that it previously stretched horizontally

I dunno about this one. I just checked some references and if anything, the balls usually don't stretch vertically nearly the same amount that it squashed/stretched horizontally.

(they're all short)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTt886y0rWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVTJNv3-mWk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jI57WMOzbU

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I agree with the rest of what's said though. I guess I got carried away with the squash/stretching. I'll remake the first one later on. I might also try to do something a bit more interesting too.

[TheMario360]

Why are there 2 shadows?

[TheShyGuy]

I felt like playing with lighting and added 2 sun lights.

[TheShyGuy]

Here are the next two.

GIFS

I took it a bit easy on the squash and stretch. Also, after a bounce, instead of a linear grow, it's more of a subtle side-wise s-like grow curve...thing...until the ball starts falling again which is when the squash/stretch becomes linear again..............Just ignore me. The point is, I made it look a bit more bouncy/rubbery after a bounce. How does it look?

I use the graphing tool a whole lot. I'm unsure if that's the "way I should be doing it right now". But it's so much easier than trying to eyeball these things. Plus that reason doesn't make much sense to me. Really, all I did was create the initial height pose and the rest was all graph/curve editting.

After this, comes two more pendulum animations + a ball and legs animation. I just gotta create a quick model + rig for em first.

[TheShyGuy]

I'm gonna use this thread to post any animations, or toy programs I make. My plan for toy programs is to just...well play and mess around with programming + animating. I've got a few ideas, but none that I'd like to do without some nice models heh.

Anyways, here's what I'm doing right now:

I'm working on a Charizard seismic toss animation as well as another animation for KingOfChaos over at kc-mm. These are basically just keyframes without any polish. There are extra frames just to see the motion. The transition from the rotation to throw is just temp, I did it just to show them both together.

Spoiler

I'm still not happy with the throw key frames. Specifically when Charizard's head points up a lot. It doesn't give off that pulling feeling from the keyframes only.

Anyone have any crits on this so far? Does the animation read well at all?

[TheShyGuy]

After nearly quitting the request because FK was too much to handle:

GIF

I decided to restart, fix some key frames, and try the pose-to-pose technique instead of trying to block out the entire animation first. I'm liking it a whole lot better. I may still do the initial twirl, but that can be append that to the beginning.

This was done in a few hours as apposed to a whole day like the previous attempt....

*wings and tail not animated yet*

-This isn't the throw, it's the swinging the target over his shoulder part.

[TheShyGuy]

I'm giving in with Brawl animation requests...

GIF Charizard

It seems like there's a bug with BB or something. It looks like it applies a bezier curve to my keys at some point. The most obvious is the beginning of the animation. The neck and head jitter (look at the difference between the previous gif and this -the neck/head was barely edited since). The legs also rotate too far (it looks alot like a bezier curve to me) during the animation too.

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I'ma save-a-holic. Here's eariler saved files-to-gif (probably within 30mins of eachother)

GIF

Not much difference below. I mostly started working on changing the end neck/head secondary animation.

GIF

[TheShyGuy]

ZSuit Samus Backflip WIP that I started today.


-stepped mode.

[TheShyGuy]

All Gifs put into spoilers except the most up to date stuff



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Edit:

Thanks to Eternal Yoshi for telling me how to set the textures.



I converted all my keys to spline. I'm pretty much cleaning up the curves and then I'm done. -...though she seems floaty now

ehh...Looking at these more.. I realized that the animation lacks Samus's personality....which is sorta important........Ehh I'll try to focus on character/personality better for future animations since this ones nearly done

[E-Man]

Before she does her backflip, she hops forward a little bit. As an animator, this action bothers me because the hop does not look realistic. If I was doing this, I would keep the feet firmly planted until she preforms her flip. Otherwise, just make the hop look a lot more natural.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcByJOjxASI

The link above should give you some ideas on how to realistically animate a flip. The little boy even provides an example of how to naturally incorporate a forward hop in.