2_Animations

As Afghanistan is the anvil of nations, animations are the anvils of my gamedev projects. For a great many years I have battered myself at the hallowed vertical walls we incorrectly call "learning curves". Each time chipping away a piece of knowledge. Each time feeling like the walls is too great. This time is no different.

In the weeks coming up to semester 2 2k22, I battered myself against the wall. 

^And again, failing to break the wall, I chipped away.

I predict this time wont be any different, especially so, as i've left it to to the day before I need to have it done to do it.

First came the mesh. Which was good enough.

Then came the skeleton. Which had an extra shoulder bone for some reason.

Then I (auto)skinned the skeleton to the mesh. where the finger weights would affect the finger next to it. (although this makes it seem as though the (pulleys?) in the hand are like in real life where when you close a single finger the other fingers will move a bit.)

^ I did have a version where I tried to fix the weights by painting them by myself. However I was doing it wrong and it caused fingers to be weighted to bones that were very far from the fingers.

Then came the IK solvers.

Then Came the controls.

^ trying to make the hand control follow the rotation of the arm has a weird effect because the IK handle also does some rotation on the arm, causing a chain of rotating.

Too late to do quality animations now.

Idle animation.

Note how the hand controls are broken. The smaller shape on each hand have a point constraint to the larger circle. This means that it should always have the same location as it. Clearly something has gone terribly wrong.

Also Note how the feet rotate into the floor. The ankle needs some kind of orient constraint to the control.

And now some walking.

^ Idle to walk

^ Walking.

^ And the special animation. The jump.

Self assessment:

I need to finish off these tutorials antCGi - Digital Art & Animation Workshops - YouTube. I've been putting them off forever. And as a result, my controls are broken.

I need to spend more time on these "self studies" Making animations in the last 30 minutes is a bad idea.

I need to model some faces.

With 2 mins to spare