Hello,
I was wondering if any of you guys could answer a few questions about animator.
First off. I was wondering how bones are used. When you select the vertices and assign a bone what determines that bones rotation point? Is there a way to move the rotation point after it is selected?
Also, I was wondering how Animator handles keyframes. Does it interpolate between keyframes? or does it just snap from one keyframe to another?
Any feedback would be highly appreciated.
cheers,
-Danny
Well, the bones are controlled by their parents.
Select the bone/choose parent.
If a shoulder bone has the elbow as it's child and the elbow has the hand for it's child then if you rotate the shoulder then the whole arm rotates.
Sort of like a family tree. :P
A couple notes:
1) It's not a keyframe system but a skeletal system. You can think of poses as keyframes, but they are really just skeletal position.
When you move from one keyframe to another, it's interpolated between the vertex points. When moving from one pose to another, the bone rotations are interpolated, so things move in a smooth arc instead of a lateral line.
2) The general setup is this:
* Import a model.
* Select some vertexes and then add a bone (this helps auto-add the vertexes to the bones.)
* Vertexes can be connected to one or two bones. If they are connected to 2 bones, then the "weight" tells how much each bone effects the vertex.
The new C4D XML importer should get all this information for you automatically, so you shouldn't have to worry about it -- but note that it doesn't properly figure out parenting (yet), so you'll have to re-parent the bones by dragging them in the list (drag a child bone onto it's parent.)
* Setup a series of poses, these are rotations of the bones (when editing a pose, select a bone, then drag the points.) Make sure the bones are parented properly to make it easier to do.
You can also "stretch" or "shrink" the bones (one of the toolbar icons switches between these modes.) This is good for non-human things, like barrels of a gun.
You can think of these as keyframes if you wish.
* Now create animations. Animations string together poses with timing. You can also have acceleration/declaration and attach effects (particles, etc) to the animation. Animations are what the scripting engine and the game runs.
That's the basics. Also note that there are 2 modes of bone movements. The newer mode, which you will want to use (check the model settings) is cumulative. New models should have this set automatically.
In cumulative, bones move like they would in a human, moving the shoulder changes the elbow, etc. Think of it like folding your elbow and then moving your shoulder (the elbow stays relative to the shoulder.) The original method (which a lot of the demo models are in) does NOT do this and it's very different to use. Both have the *same* effect but expressed differently in designing. The cumulative one is easy to think about.
[>] Brian