My very first Blender animation :D !! (need some C&C and have few questions )

Sup everyone!


I finished the Fundamentals of rigging course yesterday, and today started the fundamentals of animation, which i still didn't finish it yet but man it's AMAZING how these courses changed my "perspective", see when you're playing an open world game (ZELDA:Botw!!) and you start out with a an unknown map and then you climb a tower or something and suddenly a whole new super exciting area is revealed ? well.. this is exactly what happened to me today :D

And i managed to make this!!


Really put the constraints lesson into use here by using empty objects to control the bones rotation, which they had this Transfomation constraints which make it much more easier to animate. 





So 1st of all, i'd love to hear what you think, please don't be shy telling me that this is the best animation you ever saw in your life xD

And the other thing, is i would like to know how to make the object "stretch" (get bigger/smaller) Knowing that it's gonna be used later in the unity game engine, so assume modifiers won't be a solution here isn't ?

And finally, can i split an animation into multiple part ? say this was a game character, then (roughly) this :

would be the "walking cycle" which will loop as long as the player is moving, and this 

will just play whenever the player come to a full stop.


Also, can i "disable" an animation keyframe without removing it ? 

for example i want the animation to play the same in Blender, but in Unity i don't want the object to translate over the X-axis because it's gonna be controller in-game.

And finally, my goal now is to recreate all of these just by looking at the reference gif, and why not make a tiny non-commercial game with it, so if you have any advice, or courses to start, please let me know :)

Anyway,

really looking forward to your feedback, thanks!

  • Naldo Colella(naldoc) replied

    I might be wrong, I'm new here just trying to be useful in community.

    When the character (let's name it Bob) starts to get the boost to start walking/running it seems that Bob is already walking/running before the boost so it doesnt feel sooo natural, try to stretch more before the walk/run and only walk after the boost.

    Sorry about the low quality english, I'm just trying to help.

    By the way, I love it, Keep going on.

    A really good video about the 12 principle's , the second principle,  antecipation
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8OtE60T8yU
     

    You rock!

  • Ala Dhiabi(alaslipknot) replied

    you're totally right!! I didn't have any anticipation in that animation, i still don't feel 100% comfortable with rigging though (specially wait painting) so am gonna focus on that for now, but yeah, understanding the animation "law" is a must done task too.


    Thanks a lot for the kind words! i really appreciate :D !

  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    Ala, this is looking really great! It's clear that you're putting what was in the lessons into practice, so I have no doubt you'll kill it at the next level of animation courses. 

    I would like to know how to make the object "stretch" (get bigger/smaller) Knowing that it's gonna be used later in the unity game engine, so assume modifiers won't be a solution here isn't ?

    It looks like you might have to redo your rig a bit for that, because you'll need a way to control the top bone's location so that you can make it lag behind a bit, but it's definitely doable. Bendy bones might help here. 

    And finally, can I split an animation into multiple parts?

    Yep! That's exactly the right idea, and Unity will even be able to blend between them so that it's not a harsh cut. 

    Also, can i "disable" an animation keyframe without removing it ?

    Not a single keyframe by itself, but in the curve editor or dope sheet you can "mute" a channel (like the X location) with the speaker icon so that it doesn't contribute to the end result. 

    Keep up the good work!

  • Ala Dhiabi(alaslipknot) replied

    Thank you very much! i really appreciate your feedback :) 


    Still on the topic of "stretching" ,  in the Anticipation video in the "Fundamental of animation" course, the author is using a "lattice", which looks pretty handful in these case, I just wanna know, if i use that, and export the animation, will the mesh deformation still be there in Unity ? am okay if the lattice itself is "gone" (even though it would be great to be able to control that procedurally in game engine but that's not really a requirement now), i just want to know what tools not-to-use when it comes to Blender-to-unity, for example (correct me if am wrong) i could've just use a stretch modifier to animate something similar in Blender, but that will not be translated into unity right ? will the same be applied to Lattice ?


    Thanks again ^^ !!



  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    No problem! Blender has a way to bake animation data to vertices for exactly that purpose. So for anything that does not need to be directly controlled by the player, feel free to use any constraints or lattices that you want. 

  • Ala Dhiabi(alaslipknot) replied

    AWESOME!!

    Thanks again!

  • Ronald Vermeij(indigowarrior9) replied

    Hello Ali, Your animation looks great, keep pushing the envelope!

    QUESTION:
    How did you create the 2nd (animated) gif image, which shows the little timelines of each point?