I started by creating a storyboard for my stylized walk cycle, plus a little animation at the end.
Above is the video footage that I used to create the storyboard.
Making Friends with the Rig
After I’d gotten a good reference to use and created my storyboard, it was time to move on to the rig and getting used to the controls. The first thing I noticed was that in this particular rig, translation will move the mesh out of place, and I’m meant to rely on rotation instead. I was also grateful to find that the rig had a scale constraint, so that I couldn’t accidentally cause obvious errors by having pieces of the rig enlarge or shrink. Every good rig will have a scale constraint. Other examples would be a point constraint, which constrains translation (not something a rig would usually come with, but one that you could use yourself when animating), orient constraint (rotation) or an aim constraint, which ensures that the child points at the parent, often used for eyes.
Another thing that I noticed regarding this rig was that when I use the waist control to bend the legs, the knight squats in a weird bow-legged way rather than straight down.
This is just something to be aware of when I use the controls further- I must always make sure that the knees are pointing in the correct direction.
It took me an unexpectedly long time to get the rig into the first pose. Many of the controls, I found out, actually move pieces of the armor and not the body itself. I spent some amount of time considering just accepting that this rig is beyond my skill level and choosing a different one in shame, but I’d already made the storyboard. After a bit of work, though, I got the hang of it and put my knight into his first pose:
Something else I hadn’t realized about this rig is that there is no way to adjust the toe roll that I can tell. There are controls marked toe roll but they affect the foot position. Perhaps this is because the armor is supposed to be very heavy and stiff, rather than leathery as I had drawn it in my storyboard. I also couldn’t seem to understand why many pieces of the rig appeared broken or disjointed like this:
In this gif, there is no key set on the wrist, but even if there was I can’t understand why it wouldn’t move with the elbow as the other arm does. I attempted to parent the joints and realized that it is the mesh that is not moving, while the skeleton itself has no problem:
I decided to employ my common tactic of starting over, on a hunch that I myself had broken something accidentally while struggling to figure out the rig. Controls were everywhere, things weren’t working, and I noticed I’d made some mistakes early on anyway. Sure enough, the controls worked fine. I try to keep my starting over to a minimum, but at least I was going back in with new knowledge and was no longer held back by my own mistakes.
Much to my frustration, though, I found that there was no way that I could see other than to let some of the controls get messy. This small- as I like to think of it- vertebrae, for example. It does not seem to move with the rest of the body and when I try to “put it back” it disrupts every frame.
Starting over still had merit though, as I could make sure my knight was moving forward correctly. Maybe I’ll be a little more kind to myself and make it a much-less-polished pass. It’s not the time to worry about fingers, toes, fabric, and breathing yet.
Against all odds I finally made it through my first two steps (24 frames).
You can see that I’ve brought the confident, puffed-up march from my storyboard one step further in most of my keyframes, giving it more arrogance and bounce.
You can also see in this playblast the “messy” controls” I meant that have been frustrating me so much. There are two that stay put in one spot and can’t be moved without damaging the animation. As I said before, I believe that these are similar to the root control and are not supposed to be animated, as I can’t see any way to effectively do it, and they are labelled “Root Part 1” and “Root Part 2” (with 2 being a subset of 1) in the Outliner. I know that the sword and shield both have similar purple tangents that ensure the object continues to point in the same direction while the character around it moves. It is possible though that I am entirely mistaken. For one thing, the piece of spine is the most vexing to me. I can’t understand why the spine would need a stationary root like this, but when I open the rig up untouched, sure enough, that piece of spine does not move with the rest. Furthermore, when I try to move it, the action oddly can’t be undone, and seems more like some kind of pivot point. I have much less doubt in my assumption that the yellow controller at the starting point is also not meant to be animated, as when I experiment with it, it stretches the mesh unnaturally.
All I can find online regarding this subject is a thread on cgsociety.org that insinuates purple controllers mean they are hidden and I should make sure visibility is on; however, under the show tab in Maya, everything is selected.
This is one of those things that make learning something new somewhat embarrassing. I feel that I am correct in my assumption but at the same time wouldn’t be surprised in the least to learn there’s a simple answer I’ve overlooked.
I put my theory to the test in a simple way:
When I stretch every object far to the right, Root Part 1 and Root Part 2 stay put. Thus, I can conclude that this piece of spine will not prove to be an issue later down the road and that it is in fact not meant to be animated.
End of First Full Day Animating
This is as far as I got by the end of the day- as you can see I incorporated one more little gesture in for even more stylization. I’d say that the biggest issue is the choppiness, but for the purposes of this project, splining isn’t necessary yet. That said, if I have time I would prefer to go back in and get that resolved. Although there are some clear issues that must be addressed, I feel that I’ve made incredible progress throughout the course of the day, considering when I first started with the rig I was unable to find many controls. I also am proud of my progress in contrast with the walker: this first day is leaps and bounds better than that whole first week.
Second Day Animation
This is my progress at the end of Day 2, just finishing up the rest of the base animation I had planned on my storyboard. I had a much shorter day today, only working on it for a few hours, just enough to get to the end. By no means does this mean I’m done, though. Not only is the animation quite choppy, but there’s significant toe dippage beneath the ground plane, and I haven’t yet animated the fabric or the fingers. This is about as unpolished as it gets. The longer I look at it, the more mistakes I see, but it doesn’t stress me out as much as it does just interest me in fixing it.
Plan: Complete the main animation → fix errors → polishes (fabric moving, fingers, etc).
Third Day: Fixes, Fixes, Fixes
Looking at my animation fresh, the first thing I did was move the chest forward a little in the walk that comes between the salute and the kneel- the knight’s back looked broken there. As I did so I realized that the leg actually moves through the shield during this segment.
(slowed down to show this better)
Sure enough on closer inspection the shield also passes through other objects (such as the hilt of the sword) during the animation. So the first thing I will do is fix any object phasing like that, and then after I will work on the toes dipping through the ground plane.
Object phasing fixes were relatively easy. Not wanting to make anything too messy, I simply allowed the left arm to come a little bit further out and sideways for the duration of the animation. As I was doing this, I noticed that the shield handle is loosely resting on the knight’s arm rather than him actively supporting it, so I rotated the wrist to always be slotted into the shield grip in a way that follows the laws of physics. While I was doing this, I decided to go ahead and key the finger positions for the left hand, which stay gripping the shield handle throughout.
This was followed by me staring intently at the hand in each frame to make sure the necessary wrist movement doesn’t upset this. It only became a problem at the end, when the pinky phased through the handle during the knight’s kneel to the floor, but I keyed a separate movement for the pinky to accommodate this.
The next thing I wanted to fix would be harder. Due to the knee controllers being separate from the legs, I’d been frustrated by the knee armor pointing the wrong way.
When I mentioned before that the knight seems to squat oddly when the waist is moved down, it is a direct result of this; although the legs seem to move perfectly fine, the knee guards seem to be set to move side to side and only point forward when the legs are bent out in a bowlegged way.
You can see here that although the knees guards are facing the same direction as the foot, the leg is bent oddly out.
I tried simply rotating the mesh, but it caused this:
That’s when I realized it was even worse than I had thought.
After attempting to straighten the knee guard, the knee aim was all over the place. I deleted every key I had set early on trying to combat the issue and was left simply with a bowlegged walk. But when I place the aim straight in front of the knee, I get a nice, straight walk, and this is what I see:
As you see here, the leg and knee itself are completely fine, but it is the knee guard that is the issue. The problem is when I try to adjust the knee guard, the rest of the leg moves with it, throwing off the animation. Before jumping to the conclusion that the rig itself is broken, I popped open the untouched version of the rig once again to make sure that I myself hadn’t caused this issue.
This is what I’m attempting to communicate in this gif. I opened the software and the knee aim is set to the sides of the knees, but they face forward. I try- and confirm- my belief that the leg itself cannot be animated from the knee aim. When I move the foot up, the knee guard stays straight, with the aim moving to accommodate, but the thigh is in the wrong position. When I move the knee aim to get the thigh to face forwards, we lose the knee guard.
All I can think is that there must be something to move the thighs other than the knee aim that I’m unaware of, but I can’t find anything else.
In addition, I just find it weird anyway that the legs would be made to automatically bend outwards rather than straight down. I haven’t seen that on a rig before.
I believe I have exhausted my efforts on my knee controller analysis and all I can think is that either the rig is made incorrectly, or there is some setting or outliner asset I am meant to understand that is simply beyond my skill level. This and the rig not appearing to have a toe roll are both the biggest issues with this rig for me.
The next fix I tackled was the toes dipping through the ground plane- easy enough, I just watched the plane from below and moved the foot up on each keyframe it dipped, as well as took a look at the graph editor each time there was an issue on an in between.
After that I decided I wanted the nose to remain pointed snobbily skyward after the salute rather than straight ahead (my original intention was that he is looking towards the person he will kneel before), because I felt that straight ahead took a lot out of his puffed-up chest and made him instead look like he has scoliosis. I did also make it a little less extreme.
Next I added hip and shoulder movements for a little extra effect, the hips “carrying the leg” and the shoulders sloping down on each step left and right.
I’m feeling pretty good about obvious fixes and may be ready to polish, but first I just want to make sure the left leg isn’t snapping on the first step-
-and fixed.
Before I finished up for the day, I spent some time animating the fingers on the left hand.
Although the changes may be small and unnoticeable to most, they are very important. Comparing this with yesterday’s, it’s satisfying not to see that toe dip. Here is my progress update for this day. Also- I came to the conclusion that my original was simply a bit too fast for the confident strut I’d created. That speed was more suited to a brisk running walk. So here I’ve slowed down the frame rate. I’m considering keeping it slowed down, but maybe not to this extent; I’ll find a middle ground. This slow frame rate does give me a really good opportunity to see some of my errors a little more clearly though, and now I’ve got a good idea what I want to go in and fix tomorrow. Specifically, the last down-pose looks a little bit too extreme, and the chest jiggles oddly immediately after the knight gets back up. Lots to do tomorrow!
Day Four: Fixes & Fabric
Here is a gif showing the changes I’ve made in regards to what was mentioned before. The easiest way for me to see these mistakes is by upping the frame rate and rendering with a tracking camera, but that takes too much time to do over and over again.
Now that I’ve made these changes, it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of the fabric animation, which I am less than comfortable with, so I’m not trying to get too fancy with it.
And here it is, my first attempt with the fabric on the right side of the body. Maybe I’m speaking from naivety, but I’m very happy with the results. I animated all three fabric controllers as one piece in order to keep things simple for myself, and simply had the fabric follow the motion of the hip, swinging back and forth. At the very end I had the bottom half of the fabric move outwards separately, so that instead of phasing through the floor it flows out as the body moves down and comes to rest folded around itself.
For the fabric hanging down from back, it was a bit easier. I acted it out with a cardigan tied around my waist and found that the fabric moves outward on contact poses and inward on passing poses. An easy way to think about it was simply just having the fabric follow the motion of the leg that is moving farthest back, but slower, as it is relying on gravity.
But I felt compelled to make it more complicated, just because I knew how for once. So I decided to go back and animate the bottom half of the fabric using the same principles as the tailed ball exercise (the bottom half following the top half, following the very bottom- the hem of the fabric- offset by a couple frames). I plunged into this task eagerly and this is the result:
I have to say I’m happy with it.
The front piece was actually much, much harder than the back.
I’m not sure what it is about the front that makes it so incredibly difficult, but it has to do with the fact that it’s a shorter piece of fabric, which means that the movement is much more dramatic as there is less of itself weighing it down. I actually animated the entire thing twice and got rid of all my work, being unhappy with the results. I had an extremely challenging time even making sure that it does not phase through the legs. When the legs are raised, the cloth must be pointing almost straight up to avoid the thigh phasing through. After almost two hours, this is rough, first half of the animation is all I had to show:
You can see that my technique is making it very fluttery, like the back cloth, to make the dramatic movement a little less intense. Unfortunately it is extremely hard to get the cloth to animate correctly without phasing through the legs.
This is my work at the end of this full day animating fabric.
I have to say that while my work on this project has previously made me proud of my progress and excited to see what else I can do, my work today fills me with unhappiness. I know that the front cloth looks scrunched and wrong and that it would be the first thing anyone in the industry would notice, but just my work on the fabric today took over five hours and this is the best I could do. With one more day to work on mistakes before submitting, hopefully I can at least make it look somewhat decent in time. I’m beginning to doubt every aspect of my animation.
Final Product
And here’s the finished product.
I have to say that of all the projects I’ve done so far, this one I think is simultaneously the best and the one that disappoints me the most. This really took a lot out of me. I can’t stop staring at how jolty it still is, despite having spent so much time in the graph editor trying to even that out. I’m well aware of how bad the fabric looks, barely following the laws of physics. And the longer I look at it the more the legs seem to snap.
I think now’s the time to be grateful for the progress that I did make. I started out on the first day spending hours just trying to figure out how to control the rig, whereas now I find it easy to jump in and change a keyframe without throwing anything off. Not only did I animate joints and fabric for the very first time on this rig, as well as animate a character holding a prop throughout, but I also am a lot more cognizant of objects phasing through others. It is difficult to see my own mistakes and not have the knowledge yet to fix them as I’d like, but, as always, Maya is a wide open door of possibilities I will simply have to discover in time.