Greetings all! I have a Lightwave class right now and Monday's assignment was to stick bones in this "TV Guy" model that came with our book. I had extra time left after finishing the simple rigging, so I decided to animate him. It actually has arms and legs but I kept them static in this. I like the motions...it takes a while to set up because the program distinguishes very clearly between moving the object through space, and moving his bones. I would have to build a pose in mid-air that might leave him scrunched and on his back almost, as it related to his pivot point (at the feet I believe), and then go frame-by-frame adjusting the poses' orientation in space to be back where it should be.
The result as I said moves pretty well - it's pretty textbook since it has all the back arching and a couple of the main poses blocked in; the object positions have been revised but the bones themselves are mainly tweened for the big poses, so it's not screaming with personality or anything, my main concern is with timing. It's a fluid jump but even with his cartoon head his momentum would not keep him in the air up to the peak of the jump QUITE as long and DEFINITELY he would be much quicker about coming down. I've made fractional-frame adjustments, condensing the time (after I made this video) but breaking up the sections and their speed takes it out of any sort of continuity of physics. The other thing I've tried is removing individual frames, but that might be a software issue because when I try to remove them and then compare them with this video they both finish at the same time; if anyone knows a good way to chop off individual bits like that in LW8 I'll owe you one.
You can watch it at http://www.studentofanimation.com/images/Sorenson.mov
Thanks for your eyes...
When it start it´s no natural. Try yourself to jump.Your body is pointing to forward, isn´t it? If not, you would fall. Look at Preston Blair Jump example:
http://www.hash.com/animationcontest/blairpages/images/jump.jpg
And I think the rythm in the air is too regular. It may be fast at the beggining, a bit slower when it reachs the top, fast falling... Break the rythm :p
Anyway, Lw is a great software. Good election. I use it to model. But I prefeer AM from Hash to animate.
Alén :cool:
The idea was actually to use his enormous TV head to pop and spring, with the weight and density of the head to provide momentum. Sort of arching back and using what must be incredibly strong thigh muscles to hurl his head forward and thus propel him into space. A normal person's hop, like my own, doesn't necessarily apply here because we're not that top-heavy.
That's what I'm trying to say. The whole thing needs extra speed, but he's got too much hangtime -- I can fix the overall speed by condensing that whole section of time/movement. My problem is moving him more quickly over that time. Say the jump from contact to contact is 9 frames. I essentially want to remove, 2, 4, and 7 (this is just an example)...essentially cutting off those frames of film and taping the reel back together without them in it. Would it require re-keying things with less keys to fix the spacing?