Big Sword Animation, First Pass

This one is just a quick update.  I went through it and fixed all of the timing.  I've done a first pass to smooth out everything, and to doubly check the timing, since blocking does a great job at hiding it (I usually block in linear for that reason).  My next step is to go through and clean up all of my arcs, especially in that body.  I've done a bit of it already, but I have a lot more to do.

And for fun, here's a rough camera test, too.

Big Sword Man Animation, Blocking

Here's the current animation I'm working on.  I've been wanting to do a heavy sword combo for a while now.  Right now I'm still blocking it out, using a slightly different method than I have before.  So far I've learned a few things from this one:

1. Joe Daniel's Body Mechanics Rigs are awesome! They're worth every penny.  They have some great features that really show off body mechanics, such as the twisting in the arms/legs.  It does help that they are fairly blank.  Also, I always forget how ridiculously useful turning on and off body parts is.

2. Along those lines, I'm mostly in IK arm space for this one, it really helps to block the hands without the arms visible.  I can focus on where they need to be, then turning on the arms later, I can adjust them so the elbow actually works properly.  In fact, the left hand was the very last thing I touched in the video above.

3. Getting good reference isn't enough unless you are inspired by it too.  I mean, that's obvious, right?  I tried to jump into this one though, with some reference I had shot a month or two ago, and I was just struggling.  When I recorded some fresh reference though, I found the excitement that the old stuff just didn't give me.  I had to delete some old work, but it was absolutely worth doing.

I'll be posting an update fairly soon!

Into Cover and Wall-flip Animation

I've worked on this one for just two days.  I wanted to do that slide up to the wall bit; it's a good practice shot.  I actually think that part is working the best, and I'm looking forward to doing that smooth reload animation from my reference.  The flip though, this is where my reference stopped short.  I didn't decide what I wanted to happen at the end, because I didn't put the same amount of thought into that motion.

I ended up doing two versions of the end, a standing side vault (usually done from a run) and a flip.  Forgive the lack of timing on the first vault.  They do look cool, but I still have to decide what the story of the shot is; that's something that I should have already worked out, and now I'm suffering for it.

Using a Rivet Script with Overlapping UVs

When working on my facial rig test, I ran into the problem where I had overlapping UVs, which caused issues in the script.  My solution was to move the overlapping UVs into a different UV quadrant.  Since the texture tiles at a 1:1 ratio, moving the UVs into the (-x, y) quadrant means they function the exact same, but their coordinates are different for the sake of the script.  Clever.

I used the djRivet script for Maya.