Bones&bipeds.

Bones & Bipeds

   This session showed us how to animate a basic leg with two bones. This skill will come in particular use when attempting to rig our own models for personal animating.

 Bones and Bipeds allow for animation of  characters/meshes/models that can be made in a 3d modelling suite, with biped/humanoid skeleton pre-fabs that can be manipulated in a variety of ways. (Mechanical, Organic etc.)

By default, it is by forward kinematics that the animation hierarchy goes by, which can be difficult for animating realistic movements. However there is a way to get around this by assigning the lower bone (child) to influence the movement of the upper bone (parent) by customising the 'solver'. this is, in turn called 'inverse kinematics'.

 Can skin a model over bones to achieve animation.

Set all bones to rotation only by right clicking the scrubber and setting only rotation keyframes.

(Make a basic tail out of seven or eight bones, set them all to only be affected by z rotation, set all curves to 20 (on the first) and -20 (on the second rotation). The tail now sways, albeit a little mechanically, to make the movement seem more natural, like there is some sort of force/weight behind the movement we have to offset each bone's rotation by 1 each time, go through and do this for all the bones on the curve editor. Further playing around with offsets and positions perfects this as the animation should now seem to have a natural movement).

(This set of bones can now be copied and used on other objects within the scene.
Gimbal to rotate, parent to move).

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Ball bounce

Ball Bounce.

• Key frames assigned (0, 20, 40) 25 FPS (frames per second.)
• Helper position altered on y axis (right port view) not front view, ergo not x. 
• (keyframe 20) Move ball helper to 'ground' impact point. 
• (keyframe 40) Move ball helper back to respective height on opposite side of 'ground'.
• Squash/Stretch tool implemented on ball selection at keyframes 3, 19, 20, 21 and 34 to realise the shape/geometry/structure distortion of the balls shape. (spherical, squashed to egg, spherical). 
• Rotate tool used to spin 90degrees at key frame 0, 180 degrees on z axis at key frame 20, then 270 degrees when reaching keyframe40.
•  Slight height alteration to create a sense of physical 'hanging' (frames 36 & 4-5)
• Active time segments ticked on render. Final sequence for rendering established. 

   Animation feels very natural and logical in 3DSMax. The autokey function is helpful for not having to remember every single frame and where the spin/position is at each point. This ball was taxing to make seem real when bouncing. As animation can break the rules of physics, you can begin to create realistic animations by exaggerating physics. (an inanimate object such as this ball, would not anticipate an impact, yet we made this ball anticipate the bounce to give it more 'character'. Reality is slightly static in relation to what is possible with animation. The below screen shot demonstrates the wave patterns in which the height and position on the axis change.