Animating Characters Moving Around a Scene

[Seifo]

This is a somewhat basic question...

Technically speaking, what would be the best way to animate a ball bouncing all over a scene? My first thought is to animate the layer for the X and Y movements, and then use Smart Bones or point-by-point for the squash/stretch, etc. That poses some problems, though, specifically that when using the motion graph you can't have independent and separate X, Y, and Z keyframes, which makes for some really clumsy fine-tuning with Bezier curves.

So, my solution is to create two Smart Bones that control the X and Y movement of the ball independently so I can adjust the X movement without all the Y keyframes muddling the workspace, and vice versa. This is actually working pretty well, but is there a better way to do it? I mean, it seems fairly basic to want to move and animate a character or object around a scene with a reasonable degree of polish without having to resort to a workaround.

Thanks in advance!

[Kaminho]

It is not a better way to just move object (not layer) and keep adding keyframes by that? and later on just add ease effect?

[Seifo]

Yes, that would work, except that you wouldn't be able easily adjust the X or Y Bezier curves of all the points without them being in some sort of a group or all controlled by a bone or something. You'd have to do point-by-point animation for everything, I think, which would be quite a bit slower.

[Greenlaw]

If it's just a ball, you might consider path animation. It's very simple to use:

1. Create your ball art layer. Make sure the origin is in the center of the ball.
2. Create a new vector layer and draw the path you want the ball to follow.
3. Select the ball layer and then select the Follow Path tool.
5. Now click on the drawn path. This binds your ball to the path.

To animate the ball, drag the ball layer along the path to where you want to start the animation and make a keyframe. Now advance to a later point in time and drag the ball layer to the position on the path where you want it to be at that time. Naturally, you can keyframe to any point along the path and use different interpolation modes to affect the velocity. Since the XYZ coordinates at any time is defined by the path shape, there is no need to access individual position channels.

If you need the ball to rotate along the path, you can automate this with an option. Depending on the animation you may want to keyframe the rotation manually though.

The nice thing about this is that editing and re-timing the path motion is easier and more flexible than if you animated the item directly. If the ball needs to change course, you can simply reshape the path.

Any contact deformations for the ball, i.e., squash and stretch, can be animated in a variety of ways directly in the ball layer.

G.

[Greenlaw]

On a side note, what's described above is the most basic use of the tool. There are other fun options available to path animation, like the ability to deform artwork along a path. For example, attach a stick to a wiggly path using alt-click, and you have an instant snake.

G.

[Seifo]

Hey, great! I had used a similar method in Flash many years ago, and I forgot to even look for a "follow path" option in AS. Thanks -- that should work really well for a ball.

Now, in a more complex scenario, would that still be the best method to use if you wanted to animate a two-legged character walking, jumping, and/or climbing around a scene?

[Greenlaw]

There are a couple of ways to do this.

You could use the path animation trick but it gets tricky if you want to avoid having the character slip as he walks. If the characters are cartoony and moving quickly, you can often get away with it easily. With more careful effort, the animation can actually look pretty nice. You can manage this by regulating the speed of the character and the timing of your cycles, and knowing when to break the cycles and start manually keyframing the motion.

If the feet placement is really important, you'll probably want to dispense with the path and directly animate the root bone of the character to move the body, and target the feet to goal bone to make sure the feet are planted independently of the body. From there, it's up to you how much want to automate (i.e, Actions, Smartbones, keyframe looping, etc.,) or manually keyframe (bones, points, etc.) your character animation. This approach takes a bit more work than just moving the character along a path but the results can be very nice.

I may use either technique depending on the complexity of the animation that's called for, the number of characters in a scene, and how much time I have to produce the work.

Tip: I like to use a free tool called Epic Pen, which simulates physically drawing on your screen with a 'dry erase' marker. This is handy for temporarily marking off foot steps and motion paths as you animate, and it doesn't damage your screen like a real grease pencil or marker might. Note that there is a solid 'Pencil' mode and a 'Highligher' mode. I like the marker mode because the ink is transparent and doesn't obscure your ASP artwork.

G.

[Seifo]

Yeah, that's what I had figured -- that animating within the layer would give you the highest level of control and quality -- but I just wanted to get some confirmation and feedback. Thanks a lot for the help!