Lights , Cameras ,Action Its Animation time !!

So the last part of this module was to rigg , skin then animate, Dean wanted us to provide at least 5 different animations to prove that the rigging and weighting worked and to see if we could make some realistic ' Anims '

Easy said than done me thinks :)

So using the Unreal biped we had to then skin our character to make sure that evrything worked as it should do hmmmmmm !!!



I didn't really realize how much different processes you had to go through to get your character to move 'Patience is a Virtue so they say' ! ,or something along those lines.


So my character looking like something out of elephant man time for weighting me thinks! This is all a bit new for me but i soon got my head round it .



So this is handy to know,I can control where the vertices of my mesh is suppoesed to be so that when i animate i dont get the Elephant Man thing happening, and slowly but surley my character is looking human :)



So thats how to Rigg my character now i can have some fun with ANIMATION.


So Animation Time is here so let the fun commence !


I got into college a bit late , so I missed some crucial info on this whole Amination business, but if I want to make characters for future I guess i pay some attention to this.

I did learn there are two types of animation in Max Forward Kinemetic and Inverse Kinemetic basically the difference is Forward is where you control the parent bones e.g if i was to pick up a pencil i would bend down first by chest and rotate down , then rotate the shoulders ,then the for-arm , then the hand , then finally the fingers.

Inverse is where i control the hand and the rest of the bones follow suit, and Max tries to work out where the bones follow, i think thats how it works .

So for my example for the picking up of a pencil, i basically put the hand where i want it to be and the rest of the bones follow behind and hopefully look right.

I did find it was much better to place the pose i wanted and the move each bone frame by frame, but there must be a quicker way round this judging by some of the animatons I look at in games.

So i babbbaling a bit on with the show!

So with Deans expert tutorials there are four key elements to walk cycles


1. Contact - where the heal touches the ground , and the oppposite leg, the toe touches, and the arms are opposite to the legs.

2. Pass - this is where the legs cross each other or just before

3. Down - this is where the forward legs knee bends and the weight shifts forward so the hips and the head shift

4. Up - where your character weight is upward and the hips move back to centre line and the other leg is ready to start the whole process again

The first process is to learn the art of walking, sounds easy after all we do this for the best part of our lives till where all in that wooden box, but to be honest i found it a bit hard to follow Deans Tuts on the whole walking thing in 3D Max but i had a go



Ok I think I got the walk cycle pretty much sussed I can have some real fun and Ive thrown in some of my models from my Doomsville Level just to give it a bit of reality..... hope you like as I enjoyed making this

DRAW -



Wagon Climb -



Sneaky crouch -



Brush shirt-



Walk -




Final Animations-

So thats about it , if Ive got time I mite have a go at doing a death scene to go with the others ......... If !!!!!!!!



THATS ALL FOLKS !