How to rotate a clip?
Eyos
Posts: 114
I created a walk cycle clip. When I try to use the clip in another animation, the figure force its position and rotation from the original clip.
How can I set the clip to start playing from a new location, and that the figure will walk in another direction? Thanks.
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Comments
What do you mean by a "clip" ?
Is it an NLA clip or a keyframed animation ?
For an NLA clip, you must link the second clip to the end of the first one and select the hip of the character.
If it's a keyframed animation, you can select the character (top of the tree) and group it, then you can move the group.
I mean NLA clip. Finally I managed to rotate the character and use the NLA clip. However it required manual work.
The main issue (I think its a bug in Carrara), is that the character was rotated, but it retained its original movements directions.
For example, if it was moved along X 10 units and along Y 7 units, you would expect the character to change how much it moves along each of the axes, after it is along Z. However, this is not what happens. After rotation, the Character will still move 10 along X, and 7 along Y. I find that NLA are not very intuitive when you want to rotate characters that are controlled by NLA.
Your grouping suggestion above for keyframes is a good one, thanks.
Apply the clip(s) as usual to the character - as long or short as you need.
Select the character and anything else that must follow your new changes in rotation, translation, scaling, etc., from the Instances Tray and type: "Ctrl G" to group it all together into a single entity.
Name the group to something descriptive - like the name of the character, for example.
Now you may manipulate that entity however you like.
At this particular part of this video, I've done exactly as above, and then, with the group selected, I hit the CapsLock key to move the hot point of the whole group to the radial vertex I needed to get her to walk in an arc, and then rotated the group accordingly between the beginning of the walk, and the end of the arc. You can see some foot slip in one of the clips, but it still turned out pretty well.
When I say that I've made Just a Bit of Fun out of throw away test renders, this is exactly what I was testing in this sequence of clips - maneuvering an animated character within the scene.
Note:
For this type of work, I use visual indicators as to where the feet need to be at which points in time, as this sort of thing can be quite tedious.
In the above example, it all went very smoothly for me, and I consider myself fortunate to have pulled it off so very quickly - I didn't spend much time setting it up... I imagined the arc radius in my head, I saw where she ended up walking a straight path, and I rotated her grouping ot get her feet to land where I had envisioned them to finish.
There where a few tiny fixes to do with simple moving of the group along the timeline to keep her on track - and then to make sure that her tweeners were set to linear for the whole arc thing.
Yes, motion paths would work slick for this, I'd imagine. But I had imported an aniBlock walk cycle, changed it up a bit, and saved it as a set of clips - one for the hip and legs including parts of the torso, one for the blinks, and then I animated the hands and head by hand using keyframes afterwards. I do this sort of combination all the time, and find it to be enormously time effective for a fellow that doesn't get much time to work ;)
Alternately, this Mimic Test on Rosie uses the GoFigure V4 Walk Construction Kit for the arc (it includes arc turns and ninety-degree corner turns in both directions) for the chest, abdomen, hip, and legs, Mimic Pro for Carrara for the head, and I keyframed the neck and arms.
Resources:
aniMate aniBlock Importer for Carrara
GoFigure aniMate products and aniBlock sets
Mimic Pro for Carrara
aniMate 2
Awesome GoFigure aniMate Tutorials for editing aniBlocks, creating new ones from keyframes, saving as ne aniBlocks! Apply heel angles and all manner of changes.
JonnyBravo's awesome aniBlock Importer for Carrara tutorial - Just keep in mind that if you Copy/Paste clips, like in the vidoe, you're actually creating whole new clips added to system resources. Instead, drag the clip multiple times to the timeline, or use the "Loop" option in the NLA Clip tab.
SKAmotion aniBlock kits
Posermocap Animated PZ2 collections
I have used products from all of the above, and love them. Very high quality.
I haven't tried BoneTech3D yet, but can't wait to try them... they look like they'd work well for what I use purchased clips for - I load them, tweak them, delete parts of them, and save NLA Clips from them.
That being said, I also like My Animation Kits too! LOL :ahhh:
Thanks for all the advice guys, it is really helpful and teaching. The animation I'm working on is of a dinosaur, and I find handling the walk of a 4 legs creature is quit laborious.
As with the same principals I talk about in Carranimation Part 1 – Rotation of the Hip, at the Carrara Cafe, I begin each next movement frame with the moving and rotation of the hip of the beast, watching carefully how far I want it to travel between leg changes - how far do I want the 'drive' legs to move before they lift and relax forward, letting the other two legs drive for the next movement forward.
I am more of an Asymmetrical animator, rotating each joint separately according to how my eyes and mind tell me that the motion should take place, rather than to perform symmetrical copying from one half of the body to the next for sake of speed. We all walk differently on our left sides than on our right, due to some kind of pain, weight load, thought going on in the head, person walking by... whatever. So instead of settling for a cheat like copying one side of the body to the other, I'd rather copy the first frame to the last, so that I know the cycle becomes fluid, and then animate the rest by hand.
Don't get me wrong... I do cheat, and it saves me a lot of time! I buy motion-capture aniBlocks. But those are recorded from real people's motions, so they, too, are asymmetrical in their own right - and tend to look more natural than one side cloned from the other.
Anyways, I start by moving the hip, and rotating it according to how the hind drive leg is going to have to be bent at the end of it's pushing motion. So the next thing I work on is the rotation of all of the hind drive leg's various joints - shaping the end of it's push. I'll often have to go back and forth between the hip and those leg joints - placing the tip of the foot (or hoof) exactly where it will look right compared to where it was in the first keyframe. Once I get the hip and the hind drive leg sorted out, I finish the hind quarters by addressing the other hind leg as it travels forward - imagining where it will be... has it touched down already? Has it touched down before this point and has started it's drive? I sort that out right here and now, and work it out between this frame and the first, ignoring what happens in between for now.
Now I have to focus on the fore drive leg (the one pushing or pulling the beast forward) and where it needs to be. To do this, I start countering the rotation of the hip with the other joints leading to the shoulders - often over adjusting with the next joint, like the abdomen, so that the next (chest) can counter that one, and the weight of the beast on that driving foreleg. So now I'm rotating the joints of that leg as well as the joints between it and the hip, to help the motion show the viewer the weight of the creature. This is where I'll keep in mind what's going on with these central spinal joints between this frame and the first, and begin anticipating what happens next, and so forth.
The final leg has to travel forward and get ready to take over, and the neck and head need to counter everything that has just happened with the spine behind it. This will give a natural feeling towards how to finalize the initial stages of this frame with the tail joints.
Did I just say "Initial Stages"? Yeah... before you'll really enjoy your cycle to it's fullest, you'll likely have to come back to each major frame and tweak some joints about.
The big thing to keep and eye out for with something like a massive Dinosaur is that the drive legs will have to give the impression that they are firmly planted into the ground during their drive movement. Massive weight begets a certain firmness... no sliding.
Another thing to keep in mind:
To help that lumbering motion, just make a walk cycle at first. You'll see in the end that the drive legs stop driving and begin returning a bit too quickly. This is where you can try playing with the ease in and ease out of the tweeners to try and really get the weight of this massive creature to become apparent through the walk cycle. Try playing with the tweeners before trying to add more keys. This is where you might try opting for linear tweeners instead of Bezier, and experiment with a very high ease in and out... see how it looks.
Turn your render settings and output resolution way down to simple renders. Don't worry about how the dino looks right now... just look at how it moves. Make some changes and Ctrl R to get that render done, so you can compare it to the last animation.
Oh... and save various stages as you go! :ahhh: