Animate an old man falling over

[Mattyj]

Hey folks,

Just wondering what the best way would be to animate someone falling over? Would the physics and gravity functions come in useful? Old man drops his cellphone, reaches down to pick it up and falls over onto the ground.

Cheers,

Matt

[slowtiger]

Do it by hand. Physics is nice for lifeless objects, but not for old men.

[Mattyj]

Cool Slow Tiger so a vid reference might help?

[Franky1966]

Defenitifly. Search the old slapstick movies from the ten's and twenties era.

[Mattyj]

Cool cheers Franky

[Greenlaw]

When I'm unsure of a motion, I'll act it out myself so I understand the mechanics. Watching myself in a mirror or video recording helps.

If it's something extreme, crazy, illegal, or dangerous, I'll try to find reference footage on YouTube and download it.

Most of the time, I'll just study the footage and then create my interpretation of the motion for my animation.

But sometimes I need the exact motion from the footage. In this case, I'll output the footage as a low-quality JPEG image sequence and then import that as reference footage to Moho. I prefer to use a JPEG sequence because it is frame accurate, has lower CPU/memory overhead, and it streams well over a network.

Hope this helps.

[synthsin75]

Rag doll physics is more useful for impacts or longer, tumbling falls, as demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUxk5UD ... l=Poptoogi

But I agree. For what you describe, manual animation based on some reference would work best.