Ball and Tail: Final

Following the feedback I received earlier today, I have made changes to my ball and tail animation. They're fairly subtle but hopefully they've made a difference.



The feedback was to a) take a few frames out of the first jump, b) the character's landings looked 'cushioned' and didn't have enough weight and c) the tail at the end isn't as soft as the rest of the animation.

I've made changes to reflect the feedback and hopefully it looks a bit better now.

Ball and Tail: Test 1

Test 1 of the Ball and Tail assignment:



Pretty happy with it so far.
Feedback so far suggests to take out two or three frames at the first jump because it's too long.

Ball and Tail Problem: Solved.

Short post as a note to myself.

My tutor looked at my animation today, particularly the swivelling problem.
Apparently this is caused by the rigging of the tail being made with a 3D chain rather than a 2D chain.

Note to self, 3D chains are harder to control. 2D chains would probably have been better!!

To fix the problem in the animation (without re-rigging the model and starting again) I will have to key ALL frames inbetween the keyframes.

Ball and Tail: Problem - Possible Solution.

Unfortunately my tutor wasn't able to spot the problem. She suggested trying to use the function curve editor to fix the problem. I had tried this but to no success. The problem would still remain even if I deleted the key frames in the unwanted axis and kept the only one I wanted movement in.

After much messing around I finally tried to use Global rotations instead of Local rotations. This seems to have stopped the unwanted swivels. I'm not sure if I had been working in Locals from the start or had accidentally switched half way through but from now I should really check before doing anything.

If I get some free time this week or next I'm going to try messing around with this ball and tail rig in Local and in Global to see if this is actually where the problem is and if switching resolves it.

**EDIT** Scratch that, blogged too soon!! 20 minutes after I posted the same thing happened on Global rotations... guess that wasn't it!

Ball and Tail: Problem.

I've had this happen a few times where a movement would be in the wrong axis. I would want a limb or in this case the tail to move downward in a straight direction (in one axis) and would key it so but for some reason it would move in another axis, looking like it is swivelling into position. This movement is unnatural in some cases and immediately looks weird.
Here is a clip of the problem:



I've tried deleting and re-keying which sometimes works but not always. I've sent this clip and the scene file to my tutor in hopes that she could shed some light on why this happens. Hopefully I'll be able to understand the problem and be able to fix it in the future.

The rig was made by Em Johnson, a class mate. I tried to make my own which didn't work out well and the previous rig that I found online was complicated for what it was and couldn't do certain things that I wanted it to be able to do, such as scale without effecting the tail.