Progress Report – Week 13

By December 1, 2014 May 11th, 2016 Computer Arts Practice

Hello, just an update on where things are at on my animations.

The “walking into a pole” animation is basically done, just a few tweaks here and there when I have time.

The sword swinging animation is getting there, I struggled with the technical side of things getting the sword to attach to the hand but I’ve got that working now. (turns out you can keyframe the parent constraint at the frame where its meant to bind).

I am having problems with the IK (inverse kinematics) in the arm, I thought it would be easier to do this instead of FK (forward kinematics) but as the character turns his arm retracts and snaps a lot which is the opposite of what I wanted it to do, the arm should be straight at all times as the sword pulls him along. Currently the way to fix this is to set a lot more keyframes than I’d hoped which may lead to future problems. Alternatively I switch back to FK and re-do the arm, which is a shame because I just figured out how to switch to IK to begin with.

The stream crossing animation like the spell casting is being done in Maya 2013 so I can use the very advanced Mery rig which is a joy to work with. I’ve currently got to the point where she is ready to make the first jump. She initially flexes her arms before making a short run up to the stream. From there I’ll have her make contact with the rock and attempt to bring down the other foot so to carry her momentum.

The spell casting animation is looking all right, I’ve got her hands and arms moving in a way I’m happy with. I’ll get to the fingers later. I’ve added in a polygon sphere as a sort of placeholder for any particle effect that would’ve been used. Its helping me to get an understanding of what she’s actually casting and how she will use it. Still need to animate the part where she uses the spell to shoot at something.

Desk flip animation was put on the side until last week or so. I have a good idea for it and like the drunk walk its going to be fun to animate. I’ve got the scene setup and some initial keyframes done on the body as he types and reacts to the computer failure.

Not much else to say, I’ll just carry on making stuff.

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