In Week 5's of Animation 102 I was particularly anxious, as we would be looking at the aspect of making our rigs walk in Maya and Stop motion animation. To begin the session we looked back on last weeks lesson of locomotion where we had to do a moving cube exercise to show the walking movements and the gaps between them. It seemed that I had been the only one to do the exercise so far and that made me feel like I had done a wise strategy of doing the locomotion exercise as it was needed for this session.
For this exercise we looked at some pages from the Animators Survival guide which by now we were all familiar with. I realised we would need to look at this to identify the key poses in a walk and that the figure was walking up and down as one leg moved as did the hip. In a walk we were shown that the arms would be the furthest apart from each other and that each arm was pushed out on the down foot position. The angle of the body was an element to consider as it seems we lean forwards as we walk forwards. The bottom line of this topic was "posing is the process motion is the result."
Much like our first tasks we were asked to gather reference footage of walking movements so we went in partners. Myself and Stephan worked in pairs to video each other walking. This I suspected would be used later in the stop motion aspect of the exercise. Upon our return we began the walking exercise in Maya, and to do this we looked at a walks tempo. According to the survival kit there were different frame rates for each walk such as a very fast run would take up about four frames. For now though we would be doing something more simple and to help us we referred back to the locomotion exercise.
The idea being we would be doing sliding movements at first which would gradually develop into a more developed walk in the feet and knees. In this we save different versions of the file so we didn't worry about altering the original version starting from a relaxed position into a walk. There was a hand out in Blackboard that we could look at in relation to this. We began the exercise and I was feeling rather nervous about doing a walk but at the same time seemed confident in the fact this would be a simple animation of the feet sliding across the stage. However when starting I hit some difficulties as I wasn't sure which part of the rig to move first, as I was given to believe that the hips would come first followed by the legs.
I asked for guidance in the matter,and Johny was happy to help and advised not to have the FK IK blending tools on otherwise the arms would be pulled backwards. He told me that the walk would be a pelvis shape across and that I had to set key frames when doing the different positions. This though was where I was hitting difficulties as I learned last lesson the key frames with rig aren't as easy as sliding a cube across the board and that when I attempted a walk the legs didn't seem to move very well and were rather slow. I looked to correct this matter in a second attempt with some help from Johny to get an idea of what to do. We looked back on the hand out in black board for extra guidance and this did help very well.
However the session had come to an end and this task would need to be done for independent study. Whilst the task seemed simple I was still feeling uneasy about the walk and that looking back at the hand out would be needed to aid me in this matter.
Looking back on the session,I would've done some things differently, such as recording what Johny was showing us to give me a better idea on how to approach the rig properly for the sliding walk. In hindsight I should've taken a small note on which parts to move in which sequence to help me in doing the exercise straight after the lecture on how to do it. In conclusion it was clear that this task wouldn't be easy and would need to be attempted several times to get a refined result.
In future I will note down the key parts of the rig to move in a walk so that I don't lose track or have trouble starting the exercise. I may also consult further with the hand out sheet for further guidance on the matter and give me a steer in how to produce the walk for next weeks session.
For this exercise we looked at some pages from the Animators Survival guide which by now we were all familiar with. I realised we would need to look at this to identify the key poses in a walk and that the figure was walking up and down as one leg moved as did the hip. In a walk we were shown that the arms would be the furthest apart from each other and that each arm was pushed out on the down foot position. The angle of the body was an element to consider as it seems we lean forwards as we walk forwards. The bottom line of this topic was "posing is the process motion is the result."
Much like our first tasks we were asked to gather reference footage of walking movements so we went in partners. Myself and Stephan worked in pairs to video each other walking. This I suspected would be used later in the stop motion aspect of the exercise. Upon our return we began the walking exercise in Maya, and to do this we looked at a walks tempo. According to the survival kit there were different frame rates for each walk such as a very fast run would take up about four frames. For now though we would be doing something more simple and to help us we referred back to the locomotion exercise.
The idea being we would be doing sliding movements at first which would gradually develop into a more developed walk in the feet and knees. In this we save different versions of the file so we didn't worry about altering the original version starting from a relaxed position into a walk. There was a hand out in Blackboard that we could look at in relation to this. We began the exercise and I was feeling rather nervous about doing a walk but at the same time seemed confident in the fact this would be a simple animation of the feet sliding across the stage. However when starting I hit some difficulties as I wasn't sure which part of the rig to move first, as I was given to believe that the hips would come first followed by the legs.
I asked for guidance in the matter,and Johny was happy to help and advised not to have the FK IK blending tools on otherwise the arms would be pulled backwards. He told me that the walk would be a pelvis shape across and that I had to set key frames when doing the different positions. This though was where I was hitting difficulties as I learned last lesson the key frames with rig aren't as easy as sliding a cube across the board and that when I attempted a walk the legs didn't seem to move very well and were rather slow. I looked to correct this matter in a second attempt with some help from Johny to get an idea of what to do. We looked back on the hand out in black board for extra guidance and this did help very well.
However the session had come to an end and this task would need to be done for independent study. Whilst the task seemed simple I was still feeling uneasy about the walk and that looking back at the hand out would be needed to aid me in this matter.
Looking back on the session,I would've done some things differently, such as recording what Johny was showing us to give me a better idea on how to approach the rig properly for the sliding walk. In hindsight I should've taken a small note on which parts to move in which sequence to help me in doing the exercise straight after the lecture on how to do it. In conclusion it was clear that this task wouldn't be easy and would need to be attempted several times to get a refined result.
In future I will note down the key parts of the rig to move in a walk so that I don't lose track or have trouble starting the exercise. I may also consult further with the hand out sheet for further guidance on the matter and give me a steer in how to produce the walk for next weeks session.
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