Reply To: New Animation Course Coming?

Hi Ron.  You’re welcome.

Here’s some more answers for you.

IK/Stretchy IK:

A normal IK, is just an IK chain that doesn’t stretch. 

The Stretchy IK, is a normal IK chain when stretching enabled. (in the IK settings)

Soft IK is a stretchy IK with drivers that dampen the stretch so it never actually gets straight.

From memory, Rigify/BlendRig/and Auto Rig pro are stretchy IK (but there is probably a property to slide it on/off.

(but as I said it’s useful to have it on all the time so I don’t think many people actually turn it off)

Walk Cycles and Body Mechanics are friggin’ hard man.  Animation is hard.  Well good animation is hard.

People think walk cycles are easy because it’s easy to walk.  

Same with animation really.  People think “It’s easy to watch so it must be easy to make”.

Not true haha

Motion capture is perfectly fine to study.  It’s the same as studying video reference!

I’ve heard animators talk about doing clean up for mo cap and learning to ‘see’ the movement from the curves. (I can’t remember the animation podcast I heard this on, but maybe the iAnimate podcast??)

And as far as cheating the camera – YES!!

When animating, you favour the camera, or animate to the camera (except when you are working in games – then it’s the from all angles).  So all you need to do is make it look good from the camera view.

In the walk cycle exercise – I specifically made it from 3 angles to get the students to pay attention to the body mechanics from all angles.  This is harder, but it is better in the long run to understand more.

And it’s perfectly fine to hide parts of character when it’s not important for the story.

I’m often suggesting alternate shots on projects that make it easier/faster to animate and don’t detract from the story.

Full body shots are the hardest, especially with multi characters.  So only show what you need to show.

RE: the video from Brian Horgan

That set up is already in the VonnBot rigs and Baker rigs for that exact purpose.

Brian explains what I was talking about earlier.  Get the animation as close to where it needs to be and then polish the pops with the “Knee_bend” controls.  Key it at 0, then adjust on the frames you need and then key it back at zero at the end.

It’s personal preference if you use the footroll or the ik foot, to do the rotation.

What Brian doesn’t explain are the other possible causes of the knee pops.

It could be the foot roll, it could be the hieght of the torso, it could be that the foot is stepping too far, it could be that the hips are not rotated enough……etc

That could the cause – but the symptom is the knee going from straight to bend (or vice versa) too fast.

Hope that helps.