October Challenge - Witchy - Normal - Page 2

# 16 07-10-2003 , 12:02 AM

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Thanks Mike, if I may annoy you or anyone else with another question regarding blend shapes.

I am following the tutorial you did. I duplicated my head and created a few different facial expressions on a series of duplicates, deleting history and freezing transformations on the way. I deleted the history on each one when i was done, froze the things, selected them shift selected the original and went to deform create blend shape. I opened up the editor and all the blend shapes show up fine.

However when I move the slider the original head shifts to the right to where the blend shape copies are, gaining the expression of the blend shape as it goes. This does not seem to be the desired result as my head ends up on the other side of the screen. I have tried doing it again and I get the same result - any idea what I am doing wrong?

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# 17 07-10-2003 , 12:03 AM

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Dont freeze tranformations mate, thats what sounds like the trouble...

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination, knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. (Albert Einstein)

https://www.artstation.com/kurtb

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# 18 07-10-2003 , 12:16 AM

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Thanks Kurt that worked great!

Last edited by Witchy; 07-10-2003 at 08:19 PM.

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# 19 09-10-2003 , 08:33 PM

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Witchy.. On the eyes question. What I usually do is parent the eyes to the nose bone or the closest bone to them. Then aim constrain them seperately to different locators, then parent the two locators to a single locator that controls both of them at the same time. Maybe a bit unnecessary, but youre sure to have both eyes working the same with a single locator.

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Dave Baer
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Digital Media Arts College
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# 20 09-10-2003 , 08:47 PM

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Thanks Dave, I found a tut that said to do just that, if I had waited you would have saved me the hunt! I think that seems to be by far the most flexible setup and I have got just that working now (with a bit of kerfuffle over the direction of the aim thingy).

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# 21 10-10-2003 , 12:00 AM

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Well this is pretty sad in one sense but in the other rather pleasing, as the hunter takes his first steps....getting kids to walk is probably easier than this. Set it on loop for it to take more than 1 second, chortle, as it is well 1 second long. First time I have made anything walk though. Arms are not moving yet as he's going to be holding a gun.

Attached Files

hunterwalk1.zip (169.7 KB, 347 views)

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# 22 10-10-2003 , 12:12 AM

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Good start! You're going to want his feet to cross over toward the center line a little. Not too much or he'd look too feminine.

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 23 10-10-2003 , 12:23 AM

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Nice one Witchy, that's a fantastic start for a first walk cycle.
Keep it up user added image

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# 24 10-10-2003 , 03:13 AM

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very nice, it really is satisfying when your model finally starts moving! Looking forward to more user added image

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# 25 11-10-2003 , 06:31 PM

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Thanks guys I am working away on it. I have brought the feet in a bit now, thanks Mike; it's interesting how the small touches make a big difference.

Couple of queries. Sorry to be asking such a lot of questions but it seems as one learns one thing it generates a load of questions about the next.

1. Foot rolls - is the best way to set one up to use set driven key via an attribute? I've just been using that technique to get my hands clenching, fingers moving seperately etc, and it occured to me it could drive a foot roll too, to avoid having to roll it manually- is that a good way to do it? In the walk tut Kurt does seem to be moving his foot rolls the same way one moves the driven key things but I wanted to check, as it seems a foot roll would be a jolly thing to have.

2. Character sets. As I understand it, to edit clips or shorter bits of animation together in the trax editor these need to be created on a chracter set and imported back to one character. Is the set the root bone and the geometry or bits of the character selected seperately? Can someone just say how to set one up? Should this be done before animation starts? Advice welcome as I am finding the book a tad confusing on this issue.

Thanks.

btw I found a link to a rather good script that aids with joint orientation after you have built skeletons;

jsOrientJointUI.mel

from

https://homepage.mac.com/jschleifer/HomePage

Last edited by Witchy; 11-10-2003 at 06:44 PM.

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# 26 11-10-2003 , 07:10 PM

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Set Driven can work with foot rolls. Either way, though, I think you'd need to key them manually. I don't think some kind of auto-foot roll would work well all the time.

I'm not that familiar with character sets and such. I usually just animate straight through without using clips and whatnot.

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 27 11-10-2003 , 07:34 PM

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Thanks, I meant instead of having to orient each joint in the foot manually every time to get the foot to roll (as I am at present) there would be a slider that could control it.

Thing with animating it all is I am not sure how long things are meant to be so how many frames is a wave etc and I assume trying to work that out will be trial and error; I was hoping to work it all out in individual files, as I can see me fluffing it up and losing it all as I go along.

I think my problem is I can't actually figure out how you get it all to work together, in particular how you make different cameras do things at different times in one scene or is it all one camera doing different things etc, but I shall persevere, thanks. I am floundering around pointlessly a bit at present as a result of this confusion, but we shall see how we go. I think the gap between the intended outcome and my knowledge is currently widening.

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# 28 11-10-2003 , 08:27 PM

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Even if your initial key framing is off, you can then take all those keys and stretch or compress them as you need to get the timing right.

If you mean camera cuts, if you animate the position of the camera from one frame to the next, it's just as if it is switching to a 2nd camera, even though it's the same one.

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 29 11-10-2003 , 08:45 PM

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Oh ok, that's interesting as I hadn't realised you could just animate cameras like other things.

Does the size of the character matter when you are doing the whole thing as one? My character is fairly large and I can't seem to scale him down now he is attached to everything.

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