Advanced Body Mechanics

Advanced Body Mechanics / Anatomy and Movement

Working towards a final animation:

1) Building upon your blocked out animation, add breakdown/ in-between poses to help complete arcs (motion) and give rhythm to the animation.

2) Convert you stepped animation to Spline and clean up your curves in the Graph Editor (be careful not to over polish)

3) Check the COG/Root arcs (motion path) are clean before polishing the spine, checking for ‘weight, force, and impact’ where required.

4) Finally, check the arcs of the limbs to ensure the mechanics and forces are strong.

5) Playblast & add After Effects Pixel Motion Blur

Building the Animation

I realised a mistake I was making throughout the animation process. That I need to be carefully selective when I key frame all of the controls and when not to. When I make make the key frame pose animation, most of the time, I should key frame all of the controls. However, there are instances where this is not necessary, such as when only the limbs and not the body move. Or when a limb needs to follow a certain arc and not follow the 4’s key frame timing. And especially with the in-betweens, I need to be careful to follow and create the right arc movements as more frames will mess this up. Sometimes more is less.

I implemented this walk-cycle reference for the part just after the figure stands up.

At this pose, just as the figure is standing up, I noticed there seems to be a jump in the movement, a kink in the flow.

I noticed that this pose was wrong. That is why the figure looked weird when standing. He looks like he immediately starts walking as soon as he is somewhat upright, this looks wrong. To improve this pose, I arched the back lower and moved the hips until they were about over the foot position in the Z-axis.

Then at this point, where he first takes a step, it also needs adjusting:

According to the walk-cycle reference, as well as the video reference in the background, the hips should be higher. High enough to straighten the left leg.

I have found that I prefer to somewhat make the body do mirroring in the key frames, and then change the angles of the body (to get rid of the mirroring) in specific frames later. Since, when I am completing my key frames, the next frames will still be at that off angle, but sometimes I would prefer if the next frames were templated to the standard angled axis (reset to freeze transformation original units). So, for examples, sometimes I leave the shoulders in their original angle straight/head on), and then later add a Z-axis angle in selected frames while I reviewing the key frames. This means I can focus on only making the key frames, and not have to keep track of so many things at once, such as angles, walk-cycle, arm arcs. Having to think about too many things at once mess my animation up.

After making the key frames and in-betweens there are things I need to go back and improve on such as:

• Arm arcs – The timing and direction of the swing.
• Walk-cycle – after completing the key frames, to complete a walk cycle I need to go back and add additional frames to make the walk cycle.
• Waist height – In the case of a walk-cycle, the height needs to align with the foot position.
• Arm position in comparison to foot position. It would make sense to have the right arm in front with the left leg. Their positions may be of the same angle and distance from the waist, in some occasions.
• Foot position – foot bend, when I should use locators,

MORE

The more I try to complete in the key frames the better. It just gets complicated and messy during the later stages. But this is not feasible. I think when choosing reference footage, if I can find/make my reference footage in front, side and perspective view. The more the better.

Here I noticed that the walk-cycle looked better when the Y-axis had a broken tangent arc on the foot landing. I made it more intense for this left foot stomp, than the right as the figure somewhat hops into position before jumping.

I have much trouble with the methodology of editing after I made my key frames. There were obvious areas that needed adjustment. however, while in the graph editor, everything looks confusing. Even when I adjust all of the tangents to find which one is causing the problem, sometimes it still does not fix it. I noticed that I need some sort of order (this may just be my organisation habit showing). Some way to make it easier to sort out which parts needed adjusting and in what order. I believe that I should focus on the animation principles, or walk-cycle principles and positions, which ever is applicable to the movements at the pointing the animation.

The limb movements always seem off to me, yet over adjusting edits other controls which simply messes things up. Order is needed in the adjustments for me to understand them and find how the controls should be. The way I think of solving this is how a piece of string, loosely tied, at different points should unravel. When you pull on one end, the first tied point comes loose, then the next, and so on. This can be applicable to the limbs of a body and their offset. For example in a jump, the legs limbs/joints are in a zigzag position. Say the the body is moving forwards and upwards at a regular speed, with slow in and out, then the rest of the limbs follow one at a time. First the hips (focussing on the lower body here), then thighs and knees, shins and ankles, foot and then toes. By this logic the zig-zag unravels in this order. The limbs follow the direction of the body’s movement (for certain movements such as a jump). By this logic it is suitable to review the movements of my body rig in the animation. With other rules such as this one, in terms of animation principles or body movement logic, I can help myself understand how the animation should look, and for example, how to use offset accordingly to make the outcome look more professional.

I added more frames to poses such as this, the wind up to the jump.

In other places I tried to alter the timing of the poses and arm swings, for example. Although it feels as though it would have been easier to add in the key frames.

After making the key frames, I considered adding locators for when the hands press down on the chair and the body stands, and also when the legs are lading from the jump. I realised that I could only do this with IK controls, and made the duplicates. But preferred the FK, and the roll the hands had. I will try both ways and see how it goes.

After completing the hand animation with the locator at the point where the figure rests his hands on the chair to stand up, I believe that the outcome is sufficient. The animation is much better now, and it is smooth enough to be acceptable. In the original, the hand movement was a little unnatural, although it took a little time to learn using a locator and switching between IK and FK, it was worth it.

Play Blasts

Final Animation

After I viewed the final render, I was satisfied with the outcome. The arm and leg arcs were mostly smooth, smooth enough. the waist bounce was natural. I was able to add anticipation in certain places successfully, such as just between the jump in the arms. After I edited the position of the shoulders, which were too exaggerated, the popping in the body stopped. It also helped immensely when I altered the back control tangents, to smooth out the curves more. This was what fixed the back/shoulder/head popping smoothed out, when the figure was winding up for the jump.

I had problems with the knee popping, which I tried hard to solve.. to no avail.

Although it felt messy at the start, I now feel as though I am able to smoothly build-up upon poses, to simple movements, to more advanced ones. Here I completed a sitting position, to a small walk-cycle (little hop included), to a jump and landing. I believe that I have captured a realistic, human movement with weight and centre balance accurately depicted. Additionally, I have sufficiently aligned the animation to the 12 principles.

Nevertheless, there are always small imperfections that I would like to correct, however, I am moving on from this point in the project since time is always limited.