Testing Poses For Animation

Now that I had finished rigging and weighting my character. It was time to begin Animating, but before doing so I needed to learn the exact positions the characters limbs would be set to in order to achieve the correct movements. I spent some time recording video of myself acting out these movements for useful reference material.

 

 

In order to test the compatibility of my characters rig. I manipulated the controllers into the needed points to create the main poses which will be used to make the animation. This was a useful test as it allowed me to learn how the mesh would be affected by the movements. 

 

I’ve had issues with the knees on my character because as they bend, the legs rotate unevenly. I attempted to fix this by going into the attribute editor and changing the orientation of the bones so the values matched equally, I noticed this improved a great deal by doing this on the knee bone. Changing these settings I learnt that the rotation of the joints aren't equal and its not possible to change this unless I remove the skin which I spent a great deal of time in weighting. So I decided to leave this and try work with the knee controllers the best I can to make it less noticeable.

After fixing the orientation, the movement looked a lot more even. But I still had an issue where the legs would continue to twist as they bent. Finally after experimenting with the knee controllers I realised that the best way to make the knees bend without causing twisting was to move them forward on the Z axis Alone. I applied the value of 14. This kept the knees apart however there wasn't enough of an forward angle, the only way I could achieve this without causing the joints to rotate incorrectly was by setting the X axis to 14 & -14 when the bend motion was nearly complete. For example, from 1 – 12 the legs completely bent, but I didn't animate the X axis until frame 10.

 

When my character crouches down and picks up the mushroom, it appeared to work. Although the mesh does crease up, plus I'm slightly concerned how well it will crouch and lean forward when picking up the mushroom from the tree stump. I need to make sure I'm able to make the hand close around the mushroom at a 90 degree angle. The weighting worked well on the fingers, but the thumb nail slightly stretches with the point constraint so I will need to paint that park darker to stop it from moving.

The standing pose is in pretty much the same shape as the original meshes, except the controlling of arms. I want there to be a bend in the arm and the eyes to focus on the mushroom.

Ultimately these tests have proven that my character's mesh is capable of being manipulated to the poses and positions required. However I would like to continue improving the weight painting, to reduce the amount of creasing in the deformations.