Animation Workshop Feedback & Maya Demo - Nikita Mehta #7 (2022)

Alrighty, that is the file. I was able to open it. This is all good. But looking at this, it looks like you just want to do a cycle. So the first thing, if it's just a cycle, I think you're okay with a free-floating camera. If not, and you want to do something that's a bit more specific, you would definitely want to create a camera and then look through that and see where we are here. And depending on what you want to do with the recorder, whatever it is, and then leave that camera as it is. And if it's not animated, you might as well lock that camera. And then you do everything else through the perspective mode. And I have all this off. I usually just go polys. If you have a NURBS surface as a ground plane, that's fine. That would be that. And then I would go like this. Again, I'm not sure if that's your plan. If not, and you are just doing a side view, again, we can do side this way. And I would still do the same thing. Again, that's just my workflow. There you go. I don't want the joints. Sometimes it resets. Oh, those are not the joints. Okay, nevermind. So you have, I'm looking at your question. You're creating the wrong spine shapes. It really all depends on what the action is. Again, I'm just going to assume that that's what you want to do. You want to do a cycle of this. So posing wise, you have to also look at what the energy is and what the character is doing. Is it just going up and down? And is the character just kind of reacting to it? Or is the character actively trying to jump? Like the way you have it here with that almost like a push off into this. In terms of your spine, I think what at this point already, what I would tweak is that when the character falls, I mean, it might just be like, this is in a way your impact, but I would still have something. Let me just see if that's the root. It is the root. To me, this would be higher because the character is falling. And it looks like you got some curves there. So, and if the character is just kind of coming along for the ride, then it would be something like this. And if you go on then that impact, then it will be like this. And then the and boom, then it can go down here. You can have more of a compression there. And then you go back up and maybe it's just through the body like this. And the head is dragging. Or you have a longer hold here. And then the head stays, but then goes up. And then the whole body is leading the action. So you're just a bit more like this and goes up. And so on. So that is all dependent on what you want to do with the shot. And in terms of splining, I mean, you have to, what did you do? I don't know what your setup is. If this is, do you have layers? No layers. This is constraints. Do something. Does this have curves? I'm not quite sure what your setup is. That has stuff on it. Up and down. Yes. So is this driving the whole thing? So again, this all depends on what the workflow is. Like for me, I would take this and then spline it. And then you have to look at, okay, what are the actions at the top? Especially if it's a cycle. So is it going to be, it's not going to ease in. It's going to accelerate and hit this. But then it can't continue through the ground. So you would have to break this and flatten that. But it's also still going to shoot up. So then the question then is, and you want it to be more like this. So is it going to land? And then you have that compression now and that compression comes through. What did you have? Is it this guy? So there's another one. That's the compression. Okay. So then same thing, spline, flatten. I don't know, like whatever your process is. I would look at, okay, when it lands here, it's not going to ease into the next move. It's going to be a linear key and it's going to go. Again, I would probably break this, go like that. And this will immediately continue. And you can look at the spacing goes from here to here to here and continues to go down. That's going to be more of an ease in. And you can have something where maybe it eases in more like this. And then that could be, again, this will be broken and it will shoot up. Maybe you can hold that a bit longer. So we're going to set a key here. So it just takes a bit longer to shoot up. So maybe it's more like this and then goes up and you have that. Now, if I just look at our guy here, just do nerves, let's just pretend this is going to work. And then you can always have a flat tangents here and right click tangents flat here. What is this giving us here? There we go. So we have, it's already not too shabby. And I mean, you can then play with the timing of this guy, which was this here, shooting up faster. So you have a, like this could be already higher and then it holds just a bit longer. And even here on the drop, it might go on a bit longer here. There we go. And then let's look at this here. It's a bit of a harsh stop to me. So I would probably a little bit longer and give this a bit of a softer thing. So my workflow would be to me, like the stick is driving everything. So I would animate the stick first. And again, you can have this potentially go down faster and hold longer. So your stick, you know, this might happen faster. And then we have that maybe like this, more like that. Comes to a stop. This would be fully flat to here. That feels a bit better, right? And then go from there. And then it's just going to be a matter of, like I say, it's the character leading. So maybe at this point, it's almost more like that. And I kind of almost like that double bounce as it does here. And then it's also a matter of looking at the spacing where I see the chin is here, here, here, and then kind of hits a wall. So you probably want to go, maybe this one could already be a bit lower. Okay, I see. We go even a bit more. Spline this. And then we have to look at this. So maybe this is here and then it goes low. And then maybe it's more like that. And then it shoots up. Spline this. That could be something. And then what is this? Yeah. So what if on the drop, it's definitely going to be raising up here to bring the shoulders down. And then so you look at the spacing, right? It starts to drop, drop. Bam. That's not enough because you have that gravity. That spacing is going to continue, go even lower. And then it's going to start to ease in. And then you have a bit of a whole dissipation. And then it will go up a bit faster. And then you can even go like that and do a foot roll, maybe. But you have to look at, in terms of the physics, if this drops and it suddenly ends because of the ground, well, the rest of the weight of the body is going to continue a bit faster. So maybe it's just not enough. And you're going to shoot up here. I don't know, that feels better to me. Again, if this is your intention, just a cycle. So is it going to be something like that? Or is it totally out of control and it's not this? Is it the opposite? Where what if the body is always like this? I'm just going to mess the whole thing up here. But just to show, you know, the body is just always like that. And then it's more of the stick is driving everything. And the body is just kind of reacting to it. It's almost like it's just the secondary movement or the drag overlap follow-through is on the human. But it's actually the stick that does it. I mean, that could be also a valid thing. You can see that a bit of a pause actually more. So in a cycle, you would just do cut one frame off. So it could be that. I don't know. I hope that helps. So to me, I would take this and use the stick and animate the stick first because the character is parented to that. And then you have to look at what the character is doing and what the intention is. Is it just kind of going along for a ride? Or is the character the driving motion and leading the action with the head or however body part, whatever body part you want to use and all that good stuff. And on that compression, you would have to use, is that the foot thing? Yeah. So on that, to me, the foot would be up like this. And then it would still be here and then shoot up. And then on this, you know, I mean, it could be something where what if it's like that. And it could be fun to maybe go for it. And then at the apex, it's already not going to work, but I'm just going to push it. And it was right. Take this. This could be something where now your character's feet are dragging and then they go all the way back down to this. And maybe at this point, more like that boring. And then that would be lower compression, low here, you know, something like that. And then you could potentially have, do we see the other foot? So you could have one, but then, you know, then it would be somewhat offset. And that could be fun too, where it's just, it's a bit more cartoony and the character's trying to figure things out. Going up here. I don't know. I was guessing here into something else. And then you would have something where what if it's just having more fun like this and then it's still here. And then we of course want to fix the knee. Question is what is the knee? This guy. Okay. So at this point, the knee would be here and then here and then back down. That's a really big pop there. So of course I don't like that. So we would have something maybe more like this and so on. Again, this is very rough. You would have to here, go maybe into something more like this. We can even go out. There are many, many ways to do something like that. And of course you got to pick one, but that's, to me, that's how I would approach it. Decide what is the driver? Is it the stick or is it the human? And then go from there and see how the human responds to it. And then, you know, for fun stuff, I would copy that so that when the thing actually lands, it would land somewhere else. And then I'm sure if you want to, right, so we're here, we have your, it's all in Z. So it would still be here and that's the kickoff here, here. Okay. So we're still here. Middle mouse drag still here. Take these out. What if it's like this? So we'll go up, up, you know, and then you would have to have something where it's maybe out here and then it lands there. But I will copy it so that you have one landing here. And when it goes forward and then drops back down on this, on the second copy, it will be here. And then it goes up and then it would land back in the original place. Or you can just go slightly more subtle where it's, you know, it could be, where are we here? We're going here. So it goes a bit back. And I had that in the previous demo where it was more like this. It had some rotation in there. And then maybe on this, that's where you have a bit of a thing. And then it goes up and that's my dog in the background trying to get in. And then you could spline all this, flatten all this. And it gets, see, now you can see how, if you just do it like that, you can tell it's a cycle because it doesn't have the full, the arc going back. Get my tool here. Is it? Okay. So I go back here and I mean, you can, again, you can do something that's a bit more subtle that does maybe something like this. To me it would be interesting to go back, land here, go up, land back here, and bam, and bam. So that you would have to, you would have to copy your cycle and just extend it over, over one cycle, not just do that, right? And if you, again, if you don't want to, then it would have to be something that's a bit more subtle. And if that character goes back here, then have a bit more variation where it doesn't do the thing of following back. So to me, it could be something like this, and we're still maybe here and it would be landing, but then it would be here. It gets a bit better, but again, it's all very cycling. You have to kind of look at, if you want this to always land in the same position, then it would just have to be a bit more subtle than what I'm doing here. It's getting a bit out of hand. But again, you can just play with it and have fun with that and just kind of, you just have to pick something. And again, this is from a cycle perspective. And if you are doing this for a different type of animation, where he might go from left to right, then it would be something more on an actual camera. And this is why I created the other cameras, because then you would have to pick an actual angle. I have this camera locked, but the character might start from back here and go forward or with some more left and right variation. So again, for you to decide, is this just a cycle thing? And then that's fine. And if it's an actual shot with an actual camera view, then create a camera, decide on the angle, but because then you can really look at silhouette and all that good stuff. Alrighty, thanks. All right. There's an email. You can sign up. You can start whenever you want. You can submit whenever you want. You get 16 submissions. Either way, a like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you.