Following week 5's session of Animation 102 I began to try animating a walk in Maya. My plan was to have the rig walk across the stage to the opposite end. I felt the best course of action would be to follow the hand out presentation available on Blackboard. I began the animation by first isolating the feet and pelvis using the quick sets option in the create toolbar so that I could select them for later. I selected the pelvis and feet set option setting a key frame for the 25fps hold at the start of the animation, this was a requirement for our animations. According to the hand out the pelvis needed to be positioned into a lower position before starting the walk and so using translate "Y" I moved the pelvis down slightly.
The next part I was rather nervous about, I remembered how much trouble I had getting the legs to move with the hips. So I moved the left leg forwards setting a key frame shortly after followed by moving the hips with translate z. I played the animation back to see if it moved which it did meaning I was on track much to my relief. The next move was to move the right leg with the same directional instructions I was begining to feel more confident in moving the rig along the stage. However when I played the animation back the rig moved along but the timing of the feet and legs was off, much like my last attempt.
I was getting anxious as I didn't want to have a repeat of last week, so I took a minute to think and had an idea of how to handle this issue. When I moved the left foot I placed a hold keyframe on the right foot then following on the next frame which was about 13 frames apart I moved the foot across followed by the hips. I played back the film and it worked which I was all but elated by this development. I kept animating the rig's movement and I was getting more and more confident with moving the legs and setting the key frames to the correct position. Near the end of the animation I moved the rig into its former standing position leaving a 25fps hold.
I went over the animation and tried to place in some elevations and lowering of the pelvis in the animation to make it look like the pelvis was moving up and down in the walk. The key frames were added as I scrolled through the animation. I was satisfied with the animation however there was some issues. The spacing of the way the character was walking as it went from a hold to a small distance to a long distance walk, which didn't seem right to me. In hindsight I should've foreseen this development but I remembered that I can't get things right on the first try.
I possibly should've rolled back the animation and marked the spaces as Johny showed me, I will make sure to include this in my next attempt, elements such as this were inevitable. In future I shall look over an animation before I render or play blast the animation to make sure there wasn't anything wrong or if anything needed re doing. However as my College tutor once told me in my art and design classes its good to document what went wrong in my work which lead to a more refined outcome.
Playblast of animation.
The next part I was rather nervous about, I remembered how much trouble I had getting the legs to move with the hips. So I moved the left leg forwards setting a key frame shortly after followed by moving the hips with translate z. I played the animation back to see if it moved which it did meaning I was on track much to my relief. The next move was to move the right leg with the same directional instructions I was begining to feel more confident in moving the rig along the stage. However when I played the animation back the rig moved along but the timing of the feet and legs was off, much like my last attempt.
I was getting anxious as I didn't want to have a repeat of last week, so I took a minute to think and had an idea of how to handle this issue. When I moved the left foot I placed a hold keyframe on the right foot then following on the next frame which was about 13 frames apart I moved the foot across followed by the hips. I played back the film and it worked which I was all but elated by this development. I kept animating the rig's movement and I was getting more and more confident with moving the legs and setting the key frames to the correct position. Near the end of the animation I moved the rig into its former standing position leaving a 25fps hold.
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| Graph editor |
I went over the animation and tried to place in some elevations and lowering of the pelvis in the animation to make it look like the pelvis was moving up and down in the walk. The key frames were added as I scrolled through the animation. I was satisfied with the animation however there was some issues. The spacing of the way the character was walking as it went from a hold to a small distance to a long distance walk, which didn't seem right to me. In hindsight I should've foreseen this development but I remembered that I can't get things right on the first try.
I possibly should've rolled back the animation and marked the spaces as Johny showed me, I will make sure to include this in my next attempt, elements such as this were inevitable. In future I shall look over an animation before I render or play blast the animation to make sure there wasn't anything wrong or if anything needed re doing. However as my College tutor once told me in my art and design classes its good to document what went wrong in my work which lead to a more refined outcome.
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