Hi I’m trying to clean up this running animation here. It looks OK so far but the timing still needs work and I need to add a bunch more in-between animations to make it look cleaner. This is only 8 frames. Is there anything else I can do besides keep adding in frames in between to make it look smoother? I guess all I can do is keep working on it.
This is going to be controllable in 3rd person and the third person view really needs some work. Any tips or feedback would be appreciated.
Your hip bone is too stiff & static in the animation. There is no vertical movement (if should go up when the hind leg is at full stretch). Also the when a leg is reaching forward it should “pull” on the connected collar bone giving the creature more reach same with the pelvis. If the hind leg is going forward then it “pulls” that side of the pelvis forward and in contrast the leg left behind will pull on the other side of the pelvis.
The collar bones and pelvis in a way nearly mirror their motion.
I’ve taken a video with the armature included. I guess you’re right the hips are stiff even with that little bit of movement, it should be more right? My collar bone moves quite a lot already.
For the up and down movement could I simply move the whole rig up and down to get the up and down movement and then stretch the legs as needed to make contact with the ground or is there a better way to do it? Cheers.
Its better but smooth out the spine moment. Right now the shift in angle is a little too much (work more with the collar bones / pelvis if your rig has some resemblance to spline ik)
Ok, thank you for the advice. The animation is the same as the first video btw, I made no changes. I think maybe the pelvis isn’t weight painted enough? Looks stiff without the bones. That video you shared was great too. Will give that another watch to get the movement and flow down and I’ve bought a course for creating proper rig controls… I’ll have this done in a couple months now cheers.
Made some changes. Needs a bit of clean up still but it’s improving. What are your suggestions to make it less repetitive? Should I repeat this process for 3-4 left-right cycles and make that a run animation? How many unique left-right cycles would be standard for a AAA for example? I know I’m still a ways off but I’d like to aim for something clean and professional looking in the end.
Well you are only 1/2 way into the motion. You need a full loop so that the pose ends as it starts and then subtract 1 frame. (it’s usually around 20-24 frames for a basic cycle)
It’s also still a bit hard to read because your animation curves are probably still set to Interpolation => constant (blocking phase). Switch them to Bezier so that you can adjust the keys easing in and out.