Now that all 3 of my animations have been completed, there are several things that I could perhaps improve upon. One thing I noticed with my animations is that some of the animations had quite jerky movements instead of more fluid ones, which is a result of using keyframes every x frames. If there is a way of smoothing out these animations in blender then I would like to go back and redo them.
Also, weight painting the vertices was a fairly difficult process, since the mesh would sometimes deform while trying to animate a pose, so I would have to keep going to Weight Paining mode and attempt to fix the deformation. All in all, I am relatively happy with the results, especially as I believe the animations closely resemple their real life counterparts.
Thursday 13 May 2010
Monday 10 May 2010
Saturday 8 May 2010
Weight Lifting
For the last animation, I chose to do an animation of a weight lifter lifting up a barbell. As I have done before, I used the reference videos to get a good starting pose for the animations as I find this is the best way to animate. Unlike the other two videos, I decided to create a mesh for a barbell, as this would not only improve the animation visually but also help me get a goot reference point of the hand positions.
Once this was done, I used the same technique I had used in the rower animation. This time however, I did not animate to the video exactly, but instead used it as a rough guide for my poses. Everytime the weight lifter in the reference video made a different movement (i.e. going from crouching to standing), I made a keyframe in the animation and replicated that piece of movement's starting and finishing position.
The process was a lot harder to make as I first thought, since there were issues such as the barbell going through the knees of the mesh in which I would have to re-adjust the position of the mesh before attempting the animation again. Something else that was different was that I would also have to keep changing the position of the barbell to keep it in the arms of the weight lifter.
Once this was done, I used the same technique I had used in the rower animation. This time however, I did not animate to the video exactly, but instead used it as a rough guide for my poses. Everytime the weight lifter in the reference video made a different movement (i.e. going from crouching to standing), I made a keyframe in the animation and replicated that piece of movement's starting and finishing position.
The process was a lot harder to make as I first thought, since there were issues such as the barbell going through the knees of the mesh in which I would have to re-adjust the position of the mesh before attempting the animation again. Something else that was different was that I would also have to keep changing the position of the barbell to keep it in the arms of the weight lifter.
Sunday 2 May 2010
Row row row your boat.
Now that I am animating a rower, I once again chose a starting pose for the rower using the videos as a reference. For the starting pose, I chose to have the legs at their most bent and the arms out stretched as this would be easiest to animate.
Once I was happy with the pose, I moved up the timeline 20 frames and created a middle pose (which is pretty much the pose that is half way though a cycle) where the legs were this time extended and the arms bent.
From here on in, it was just a case of filling in the blanks between the poses. It was quite useful that blender does most of the work when filling in the animation between keyframes, but there was still some tinkering to be done in aligning the position of the hands and wrists so that they follow a straight line instead of wobbling up and down.
There were several problems with the weight painting I came across while animating the rower, such as the balance bone having some vertices assigned to it. As a result, when I would drag the bones in the torso back and forth to simulate the rowing stroke, some vertices would be pulled out of positon do to the balance bone pulling on them. I managed to assign the vertices to the hip bone instead to get around this proble.
As with the running animation, the pose in the first frame of the animation was copied and pasted to form the last frame, although it did not need to be flipped. The animation was also lengthened to 240 frames using the action editor.
Once I was happy with the pose, I moved up the timeline 20 frames and created a middle pose (which is pretty much the pose that is half way though a cycle) where the legs were this time extended and the arms bent.
From here on in, it was just a case of filling in the blanks between the poses. It was quite useful that blender does most of the work when filling in the animation between keyframes, but there was still some tinkering to be done in aligning the position of the hands and wrists so that they follow a straight line instead of wobbling up and down.
There were several problems with the weight painting I came across while animating the rower, such as the balance bone having some vertices assigned to it. As a result, when I would drag the bones in the torso back and forth to simulate the rowing stroke, some vertices would be pulled out of positon do to the balance bone pulling on them. I managed to assign the vertices to the hip bone instead to get around this proble.
As with the running animation, the pose in the first frame of the animation was copied and pasted to form the last frame, although it did not need to be flipped. The animation was also lengthened to 240 frames using the action editor.
Saturday 24 April 2010
Javelin
Once the running gcycle had been made, I decided to make a start on the javelin throw animation. However, a bit of the way into position the starting pose, I noticed that the armature I was using did not allow the arm to rotate in such a fashion in order to grip the javelin properly. Instead of reconfiguring the armature to allow better grip, I decided to chose another olympic practice instead.
The first one I chose to do was olympic diving, as there is a wide variety of diffent techniques to animate. However, since I was unable to find any slow motion videos I could reference, as well as the high probability that there would be another conflict in the armature, I decided to look for another. In the end, I chose rowing since it has a good balance of arm, leg and back animation. The videos I used for reference are listed below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLhptMPeh7A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqVmMd7FdAA
The first one I chose to do was olympic diving, as there is a wide variety of diffent techniques to animate. However, since I was unable to find any slow motion videos I could reference, as well as the high probability that there would be another conflict in the armature, I decided to look for another. In the end, I chose rowing since it has a good balance of arm, leg and back animation. The videos I used for reference are listed below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLhptMPeh7A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqVmMd7FdAA
Sunday 18 April 2010
Runner Part 2
Now that I had half of the cycle done, I was time to finish the second half to make a complete cycle. Luckily, there is an easy way of doing this. Instead of re-posing each of the positions as I've already done, I can just use these poses for the rest of the cycle. In the last update, I used the paste pose to get the mid-cycle pose, which I will use again to get the rest of the poses.
Since I did each step of the animation every 5 frames, I went back to the beginning and every 5 frames, copied and flip pasted the pose into the desired frame. After doing this to every frame. I had a complete run cycle. However, I wanted to make this run cycle last over 240 frames, instead of the 120 which was the current length of the cycle. To do this, I went into the action editor window after highlighting all of the bones and selected all of the keyframes. I then duplicated them and positioned them further in the timeline so that one cycle would begin straight after the last. I then did a test render on the animation too see how it looked.
The result was relatively good but there was still something missing. It was then that I noticed that although both the leg and arm movements had been animated, the body had remained completely still the whole way through.
I went back to the animation and set up some key frames in the spine bones, giving them a bit on rotation left and right as the legs and arms move back and forth. After rendering the animation again, I was happy with the result.
Since I did each step of the animation every 5 frames, I went back to the beginning and every 5 frames, copied and flip pasted the pose into the desired frame. After doing this to every frame. I had a complete run cycle. However, I wanted to make this run cycle last over 240 frames, instead of the 120 which was the current length of the cycle. To do this, I went into the action editor window after highlighting all of the bones and selected all of the keyframes. I then duplicated them and positioned them further in the timeline so that one cycle would begin straight after the last. I then did a test render on the animation too see how it looked.
The result was relatively good but there was still something missing. It was then that I noticed that although both the leg and arm movements had been animated, the body had remained completely still the whole way through.
I went back to the animation and set up some key frames in the spine bones, giving them a bit on rotation left and right as the legs and arms move back and forth. After rendering the animation again, I was happy with the result.
Thursday 15 April 2010
The Running Man
The first piece of animation will be a run cycle based on an olympic sprinter. To start off, I selected a starting pose for the animation. I decided to go with one with a foot in contact with the floor, and the leg as perpendicular to the floor as possible, since this pose would be easiest to replicate. To help get the pose right, I used a reference video which I posted earlier which would help me get the position, angle and rotation of the bones as close as possible.
Once the pose was good from one side, I flipped to the front row and lined it up into position again. From there on, everytime I forwarded the reference video 10 frames, I moved the animation 5 frames and redid the pose, remembering to add position and rotationg keyframes for each IK bone which I would move. When the runner had completed an exact half-cycle on the video, I simply selected the first frame, selected all the bones, and chose Copy Pose. I then went to the frame where the half-cycle pose was going to be and chose Paste Flipped Pose.
However, when I done this, the legs were completely fine but the arms were out of position. I did some research into what may be the cause for this problem, which was when I was suggested that the axis of the bones in each arm may be different from each other. Sure enough by showing the axis', they were different in each arm. To fix this, I managed to re-align the bone rolls in each arm (which I have already done once before, but not on both arms) which managed to solve the problem. This time when I flipped the pose, all was well.
Once the pose was good from one side, I flipped to the front row and lined it up into position again. From there on, everytime I forwarded the reference video 10 frames, I moved the animation 5 frames and redid the pose, remembering to add position and rotationg keyframes for each IK bone which I would move. When the runner had completed an exact half-cycle on the video, I simply selected the first frame, selected all the bones, and chose Copy Pose. I then went to the frame where the half-cycle pose was going to be and chose Paste Flipped Pose.
However, when I done this, the legs were completely fine but the arms were out of position. I did some research into what may be the cause for this problem, which was when I was suggested that the axis of the bones in each arm may be different from each other. Sure enough by showing the axis', they were different in each arm. To fix this, I managed to re-align the bone rolls in each arm (which I have already done once before, but not on both arms) which managed to solve the problem. This time when I flipped the pose, all was well.
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