Moho Forum

Hi.

Now I'm at the point to where I can finally start animating instead of of the pre-production stuff. There is a bunch of stuff I would like help with, but this is the most important for me atm. Below I've uploaded a gif file. If it doesn't play, I will have to upload a video later on.




That walking animation took me over 3 hours and--half to make, Which I think is terrible. For me it was a frustrating headache...literary! It was mainly because of the masking and layer ordering of the hands, gun, sword, and trying to figure out how to go about doing it. If you look at it, u can still tell its not perfect but passable...I guess. For this, I bones, and point manipulation layer transformation...anything I could think of. The thing is that I know how to animate, but "I really don't know" the method of going about doing it with AS, especially when I keep forgetting ctrl +F.

My question is, how could I speed up my animation workflow when doing animations like this? Should I animate the bones first then worry about the build up? Should I do the build up and Movements at the same time?

By 3 hrs, do you mean you created and rigged the character and animated it? Then it was pretty fast.

slowtiger wrote:By 3 hrs, do you mean you created and rigged the character and animated it? Then it was pretty fast.

The animation took 3 hours and a half to do. The character creating and rigging for that model too around 2 hours.

Oh well - you picked the most complicated movement and view possible. In a side view, I can create a normal walk with a rigged character within 15 minutes or less. The view you chose is something I'd avoid anyway, it makes no sense in any of my projects.

Have a look at some anime: they either have the camera much higher, or near the ground. Both views avoid the shortening of limbs and make creation of a convincing walk much easier.

15 minutes?! Nice!

Thanks for the anime tip! alot of the shots doesn't show the whole body, but I'm gonnna keep that in mind. Also I would like to see some of ur animations as well =)

There is nothing wrong with your workflow based on what you said. If you are figuring stuff out still, it will take a lot longer. I bet if you had to do the same walking animation with another character, you would do it a lot faster.

a small point about the arms swinging. right now they seem to go through the sword and gun. it would look better if they moved further out to the side before layer switching to go behind.

Thanks =)

HI eric1223

Good work there! pls see this vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0qcvuyZW38 (not mine)

note: 1)hand need not go behind the body for a convincing walk (no layer ordering required = saved time) (for a cat walk it is needed)
2) To speed up the work flow take a video of the movement by doing it yourself or take a reference video import the video in a layer and move the bones to match the video it saves a lot of time.

Good luck! ASP rocks

Hey sjsrikanth.
While it is a good example of a front walk cycle I noticed something strange about the video in that youtube link you posted. It looks like it's a combination of top half cartoon and bottom half rotoscoped live vision.

Cheers
D.K

sjsrikanth wrote:HI eric1223

Good work there! pls see this vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0qcvuyZW38 (not mine)

note: 1)hand need not go behind the body for a convincing walk (no layer ordering required = saved time) (for a cat walk it is needed)
2) To speed up the work flow take a video of the movement by doing it yourself or take a reference video import the video in a layer and move the bones to match the video it saves a lot of time.

Good luck! ASP rocks

I just seen the vid. You know, I never thought about a way without doing the walk cycle without depth sorting. My only solution to this was to make the sword and gun move as his arms brushes against them...until I seen this! Thanks for the tip.

2) is a really good tip. Usually, Id use a mirror and pose each frame and memorize it, but I've never thought about importing it into AS. Time to put that camera to use!

Thanks for the tip sjsrikanth!