Captains log, Star date 569713: Now that our characters are fully modelled and boned its time to animate. Unfortunately Keeley was still ill so me, Matt and Amy each took a character to animate. Amy had the drummer as only the arms needed to move and she has never animated before so we didn't want to lumber her with a really complicated animation. Matt made two guitarists (a bassist and an electric guitarist). I made the lead singer.
The lead singer needed to have seamless animation as she was at the front of the stage and will be noticeable if there are any mistakes. The soundtrack we are using has no vocals so she doesn't need to sing but move-to-the-groove!
When I was animating her arm I discovered that part of her back was splaying out all over the place so the envelopes needed further editing (Matt had a similar problem to overcome for his guitarist).
Below is a shot of the curve editor. I finally got round to working out how to get sound into Max so I don't need to switch to and from Flash now! Sound has its own track and by selecting a waveform and importing the song it appeared and remained in the centre of the screen while I could work on object curves around it. This is a much easier process than before so the lines below show what my singer is getting up to in various angles! I decided to have her:
Hold the mic,
Tap one hand on her side to the beat,
Stamp her feet-to-the-beat,
Sway to the beat,
Rock her head as if improvising and;
bounce up and down gently to the beat as well.
This all required key framing exactly to the beat but thanks to the curve editor and the waveform I was able to have that up on one screen and edit the scene itself on another.
Below is the finished article of her on her own (note there are no materials on the mic hence the red colour!)
Major problemo!
I merged my singer into the scene once I had timed it all properly but woe is me she is too big, now usually I can just select her and resize her, but nay! thanks to bones which we all know and love this cannot be done because everything except the bones resizes, the bones remain but skew awkwardly messing it all up.
Its not as easy as it sounds because I spent a lot of time boning the lights so that they animate seamlessly as well but sizing the whole room up would have the same effect i.e. it would all size but the bones would turn weird! But I am not about to re-bone my character either, so what do I do?
The painful truth is that I have to re-bone all of my lights again after I have resize the room in every scene..again..from scratch..at the beginning...again..once more........waaaaaahhhh! This is the easiest way unfortunately because all of the characters are exactly the same so it would be better to leave them as they are.
Another problem thrown up by this is that the light beams will not size up properly either so that's another thing that I will have to redo! As you can see below the singer has her own little light partay!
The lead singer needed to have seamless animation as she was at the front of the stage and will be noticeable if there are any mistakes. The soundtrack we are using has no vocals so she doesn't need to sing but move-to-the-groove!
When I was animating her arm I discovered that part of her back was splaying out all over the place so the envelopes needed further editing (Matt had a similar problem to overcome for his guitarist).
Below is a shot of the curve editor. I finally got round to working out how to get sound into Max so I don't need to switch to and from Flash now! Sound has its own track and by selecting a waveform and importing the song it appeared and remained in the centre of the screen while I could work on object curves around it. This is a much easier process than before so the lines below show what my singer is getting up to in various angles! I decided to have her:
Hold the mic,
Tap one hand on her side to the beat,
Stamp her feet-to-the-beat,
Sway to the beat,
Rock her head as if improvising and;
bounce up and down gently to the beat as well.
This all required key framing exactly to the beat but thanks to the curve editor and the waveform I was able to have that up on one screen and edit the scene itself on another.
Below is the finished article of her on her own (note there are no materials on the mic hence the red colour!)
I merged my singer into the scene once I had timed it all properly but woe is me she is too big, now usually I can just select her and resize her, but nay! thanks to bones which we all know and love this cannot be done because everything except the bones resizes, the bones remain but skew awkwardly messing it all up.
Its not as easy as it sounds because I spent a lot of time boning the lights so that they animate seamlessly as well but sizing the whole room up would have the same effect i.e. it would all size but the bones would turn weird! But I am not about to re-bone my character either, so what do I do?
The painful truth is that I have to re-bone all of my lights again after I have resize the room in every scene..again..from scratch..at the beginning...again..once more........waaaaaahhhh! This is the easiest way unfortunately because all of the characters are exactly the same so it would be better to leave them as they are.
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