Final Animation

Here is our final group animation of the box fort fight.

The final animation is also available at a slightly higher quality via this link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3IHe2Md_Yo&feature=youtu.be

Animations by Callum Taylor, Stephanie Muir, Ben Samways and Alex Lawson.

Using The Trax Editor

Once the four animations I was doing for the group animation had been finished, the next task was to prepare them to be used for the final animation. To do this, all four of the animations needed to be transferred onto a single maya file, so that the maya files of each of the four characters could be put together in the same scene.

To do this, the Trax editor was used to clip off the animations from the controllers, making it easy to order and duplicate each separate animation. Unfortunately, I did encounter a few problems during this process. The first issue I had was to do with loading one animations clip onto another animation. At first I tried importing the maya binary file of one animation onto the Trax editor of another animation file. Unfortunately, when I did this the animation wouldn't load at all. Eventually I discovered that this issue could be worked around by instead exporting just the clip itself from the Trax editor and then importing this.

While this got around the issue of importing animations into other character files it did bring up another issue. Instead of the second animation importing onto the same rig as the first one, it instead created a second character rig on top. Obviously this wasn't usable at all. After testing out a few different things, I worked out that to fix the issue, all of the exact same controllers had to be selected each time a character set was created. When this was done correctly it allowed for multiple animations clip to be imported onto a single character rig.

The final issue I found when using the Trax editor was that when multiple animations were imported onto one rig, the positions of some parts of the body in one animation were overwritten by the animations from another. It turned out that this issue was caused when controllers were used in one animation but not in another. The fix for this was to ensure that all controllers which weren't being used but were used on other animations were keyframed at the beginning and end of each clip. Thankfully this fixed the issue with positions being overwritten and meant that I was able to finish putting all 4 of my animations onto a single file. This file was then taken, and the final animation was put together by Callum with the box fort being created by Steph.

Here is the Trax editor for the file which contains all 4 of my animations on the single rig.

Run Animation

The final animation I did was the run animation. I made this animation in a very similar way to the walk animation. First, I set the keyframes for the legs in order to get the strides looking correct. I then made the feet lift off the ground at the correct point, along with rotations on the feet, all based on reference images. The arms were done in the same way as with the walk animation, starting and ending their swings slightly after the opposite leg. The lower parts of each arm also continue to swing forward and back for a slightly longer duration than the upper arms. The difference between the motions of the arms in the run animation is that when they swing forward, they come up much closer into the chest. In the run animation, the hands are clenched close throughout whereas they are open throughout the walk animation. Finally I added a rotation to the hips and the shoulders, corresponding with the movements of the arms or legs, a blink animation and slight movement to the head for a less rigid look.

This is a single cycle of the run animation.

This is the run animation shown looping.

Idle Watch Checking Animation

Next I worked on the watch checking idle animation. I decided before I started this animation that I wanted to do something more interesting with it, rather than just a simple check of a watch. Instead I decided to put my own spin on it by having the character check both of his wrists before realising that he isn't in fact wearing a watch. I animated each part of the character together, from beginning to end rather than doing all of the arm animations and then going back to do the head animations. I found that because a lot of the movements for this were simple, it was easier to do the animation is one go. I added two blinks to this animation, as well as the chewing and foot tapping animations before and after the watch check, but not during. Overall this is one of the animations which I've most happy with. Not only was the idea behind it different, but the quality of the animation itself looks really good.

Throw Animation

Once our group animation idea had been finalised, I could begin work on the more specific animations I needed to do. I began with the throw animation. First I focused on the right arm, the one which was actually throwing the item. To get the basic frames for this in, I based the positioning of the arm at each point on myself acting out the motion. The most difficult bit to get looking right was the movement of the arm coming forward up to the point the object was released by the hand. In order to get this looking good, I worked out that the top section of the arm, from the shoulder to the elbow, had to begin it movement slightly before the lower section of the arm moved. This gave the action a more natural flow. The left arm was much more straightforward. The left arm during the throwing movement acts as the counter balance to the right arm, and as such all it really needs to do is lift up as the right arm goes back, and move down again as the right arm comes forward.

After the arm movements had been mostly completed, only a few other things needed to be done. The right left stepped back and the hips rotated right to balance the figure during the throw. The right shoulder also moved down and back, before moving up and forward in time with the right arms movements. The only other things done were animating the head so as to look in the direction of the throw, and the adding the blink animation.

Sorting Out The Group Animation

At this point we needed to get together as a group and decide on exactly what we wanted our group animation to be. After some discussion we decided that our animation would be a fight inside some sort of box fort. The rough plan for the animation was to have two characters inside the fort waiting, while two others charged at the fort before entering it. There would then be a short fight scene between each pair of two characters inside the fort.

We then set out which members of our group would animate which characters. Me and Steph were to animate the two characters inside the fort while Callum and Alex would animate the characters who start outside. The four animations for Callum to do were a run animation, a push animation, an animation of getting hit and a running jump animation. Alex was also required to do a run and a push animation, as well as a sitting animation and a heavy breathing animation. For Steph the four animations needed were a drinking animation, a simple idle animation, a kick animation and a limping animation. The four animations I needed to complete for the animation were a run, a throw animation, a basic idle and watch checking idle animation.

Idle Toe Tap Animation

The third animation I did was a short idle pose. The first thing I needed to do for this was sort out the overall position that the idle animation would start and end at. I put the figure so that he was stood with his weight on his right leg, with the left leg slightly forward. The right arm is down by his side, with the left arm across his body, holding the right arm. To add slightly more life to the animation, I also had him tapping his left foot on the floor and chewing something throughout. I also added some breathing to the animation by making the chest rise and fall slowly. Finally, I added a blink animation as well as a few very small movements to the hips, shoulders and head just to make it seem less rigid.

This is a single cycle of the toe tapping animation.

This shows how the animation can be looped, to last for a longer period of time.

Push Animation

The next animation I did was the push animation. Again this is one which was done partly in lectures, which meant a PowerPoint was provided which helped with creating this animation. One of the most important things to pay attention to while putting together the push animation was the way in which a person's back arches at different points. The first set of keyframes I did after the initial idle pose had the figure crouching slightly, bending his legs, raising his arms forward and bending his back forwards, in anticipation of the initial push attempt. When the figure first begins to push the block, I arched his back and straightened out his arms to show force was being put through them. I also made the feet look as if they were sliding backwards as he pushed. I animated it so that the figure appeared to have multiple attempts at pushing the block. The final steps for the push animation were to animated the hands so that they appear to grip the edge of the box, and to animate the head, shoulders and hips to make the whole animation slightly more fluid.

Walk Animation

The first animation I created was the walk animation. This is one which we worked on partly in lectures, which meant I was able to use plenty of the tips we were talk to make it look good. I first worked on the legs, animating them to moved forward and back only, to judge how far the characters stride would be. Next I animated the feet lifting up of the ground at the right point, so that it looked like actual steps forward were being taken. After that, tweaks were made to the angles of the feet, using reference of people walking to get this looking realistic.

Next I animated the arms, making them swing just slightly after the legs began to move as this slight time difference between the movements makes it look so much better than both the arms and legs beginning to move at the same time. I also set it up so that the fore arms would continue to swing slightly after the top half of each arm had stopped, again as this both looks better and better reflects the real movement.

With the arms and legs sorted, the main things left to do were animation the top half of the figure to move up as down as each step was taken, and to animate the shoulders and hips to rotate round as the respective arms of legs was moved forward or back. I also added a little animation to the head to make it move around slightly, just to stop it looking so rigid. As with all of the animations I'm going to do, I've added a blink to the walk animation.

The is a single cycle of the walk animation.

The is the walk animation shown looping.