Animation Test...

[Eric_J]

This was a little tedious because the green hub moves in an arc. Every key frame (30 of them) had different rotational angles for the purple and orange brackets--Ouch! Play it on Loop, obviously.....

[Martin]

Hi,
wow that looks like a very tricky animation. I guess normally you need a physics engine to make such animation. But it looks like that it is also possible without. I'm sure it took you quite some time to make it.

By,
Martin

[frank beckmann]

MMmmmmmmmmmmmmhh.
Has it to be in that d....sh....f.....g H264-format?????? :cry:

Frank 8)

[Eric_J]

It's been a long time since I multiplied vectors, so I drew it to scale in a CAD program, swung arcs, drew lines for each key frame, copy/pasted the azimuths into a spreadsheet; that took about four hours. Plugging the numbers in and watching it work was the fun part--animating the folders helped a lot (I think I'm changing my mind on this subject....hmm)! :roll: That makes it possible to swap parts, copy/paste the animation timeline, etc. very easily!

Also, I recompressed the file in the Video codec for those who don't do H.264 yet. Is the Video a good general pupose one to use?

Cheers...

[frank beckmann]

Hi Eric_J.
Thank you very, very much for the new codec.
Amazing. :wink:

With kindest regards
Frank 8)

[Eric_J]

OK, so this is really goofy, but WTF......


Let me know if the codec is OK. H.264 is really the best, IMHO, but so everyone can see, I'm trying out some others.

Eric

1/25/06--Attachments removed...

[Jake]

Very Nice Eric. Very natural motion. Is that a woman? :shock:

[Eric_J]

Very Nice Eric. Very natural motion. Is that a woman? :shock:

I'm not sure what it is--it started out as a fat guy, and now I'm afraid to ask!

The exercise was about getting the boxes to move; at the end I decided to mess with the primitives. The hierarchy is simple, with just fingers at the end of the arms. Editing the keyframe splines makes it really easy to keep the motion smooth when things change direction.

Eric

[Eric_J]

Split the calf and foot from the left leg and changed the proportions a bit. gave her that sort of strut that runway models use. Still a little funky around the edges. The torso should twist--shoulders one way, hips the other--maybe next time. Subdivision's not working on the left arm for some unknown reason, and the foot's not elegant, but the overall leg motion is improved, at least.....

Eric

[Jake]

Pretty impressive motion there Eric. Looks great. Are you doing this through trial and error, then scrubbing through the keyframes or do you have some sort of system or procedure set up?

[Eric_J]

Jake (or is it Jeff?)

I don't have scripts or anything, if that's what you're asking. I started with a small Muybridge clip with 12 frames. Positioned the model parts visually to approximate the motion, so I had 12 keyframes over 2 seconds. But not all parts change direction at the same keyframes, especially the foot--which pokes you in the eye if it's wrong--so I set more keyframes as required.

Then when I changed the cadence of the thigh--it rotates forward quickly, and backward slowly--the calf and foot needed to be tweaked. That was the fun part, giving the motion some character, but still trying to keep it looking "natural", whatever that is....

Eric

[Eric_J]

Did this using Hiroto-san's great script.....

[tg_jp]

Hi, Eric_J

wow, thank you! I am checking every mov you post, I can't want your next!

I am thinking about posibilities with script of Cheetah3D animation and modeling. falling object (snow or something), explosion, growing Hair or grass....anyway, thank you for trying ro use it. :D

tg_jp

[Eric_J]

I had some problems with the negative values, actually, but this may not have have anything to do with the script. I started with a model in the middle position and made the twists (Shoulders and skirt one way, hips the other, 0>1). That worked fine. But when I put in negative values (0>-1) to twist the other way, it didn't work as expected.

So I ended up with a base model fully twisted (Shoulders and skirt one way, hips the other) and the target fully twisted the other way; middle position is .500.

I also got some interesting Javascript "error 164"--don't subdivide the base and targets, only the morph object!

I need to improve my lighting and shading, but I'm making progress with the moving stuff. Thanks again!

Eric

[Jake]

That's pretty cool Eric. Definately pushing Cheetah in a direction that I haven't seen before. That's good for everyone. Keep up the good work.

[Eric_J]

Jake, thanks for the encouragement. I'm sort of stumbling around in the dark, but Cheetah is definitely great to work with.....

OK, so here are multiple morph objects. I started with a sphere and tube as parent and child, then duplicated that three times before messing with the motion. (After some trial and error, it looks like the rotational paths are sine waves, each offset from the other.)

Then I duplicated the tubes, scaled them up and flattened them, positioning them in the object browser at the same level as first tubes. That way, their rotational motion is still controlled by the position of the spheres. With straight segments and obvious breaks, the motion still looked jerky.

Then I took one of the enlarged and flattened tubes, duplicated it and bent it into a gentle curve. I used the original as the morph base and the curved tube as the morph target, and then dropped the resulting morph object back into the tree and animated the morph path. To my surprise, that worked well (and negative values worked fine for the reverse curve--thanks Hiroto-san!), so I repeated the process three times for the other segements.

Finally, I tapered the last segement and stretched the innermost tube (yellow tail) just to emphasize the action.

The segments aren't joined perfectly, but with some scales or patterns or feathers on it, I'm not sure that would ever be noticeable.

[tg_jp]

Hi, Eric_J

loooks so natural!! wow. :D

tg_jp