Topic: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

It is already hassle enough to model and texture in Blender without issues, but animation is a little more annoying (partly due to the fact that I'm not good at it).

I have been trying to think of some ways to get it done. Here is a running list of options:

Curious Labs Poser
http://poser.smithmicro.com/buy.html

Iclone 5(Account Neded--Content Dependent)
http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/

Daz Studio(Account Needed--Content Dependent)
http://www.daz3d.com/

Animeeple(Account Needed--Content Dependent)
http://www.animeeple.com/

Mixamo(Account Needed--Yearly Subscription--Content Dependent)
http://www.mixamo.com/

If you have any more suggestions please post them. Right now it looks like Poser is the best option.

Last edited by Tutorial Doctor (2013-10-10 18:55:34)

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Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

I know this one : IKinema
That's a free, browser based BVH retarget application

But honestly even with those tools it remains horribly hard.
I'm now looking for ready to use animations, i found a bunch at Open Game Art.

ps. I think animeeple has been shut down long ago

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

Vegas wrote:

I know this one : IKinema
That's a free, browser based BVH retarget application

But honestly even with those tools it remains horribly hard.
I'm now looking for ready to use animations, i found a bunch at Open Game Art.

ps. I think animeeple has been shut down long ago

I have been working all day to get a good workflow setup for creating a character, rigging it, and animating it. So I imported a makeHuman into Blender and made an IK rig. Then I deleted the makeHuman model. Now I have a ready to go IK rig for makeHuman Characters. And it poses so well that I have been able to get a decent walk animation with it.

Here is a photo of the first character made using this process.

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Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

I was going to say TD that "Animation" isn't hard "Walk Cycles" are hard, "Organic Movement" is hard especially when you know exactly how the human body moves and reacts to different situations. There is no faking it you eather git it right or you don't.

Note:  For clothing, use the "Shrinkwrap Modifier" and adjust the "Offset" to get a good fit, after parenting the clothes to your rig "Weight Paint" to adjust the amount your clothes deform during movement."  I haven't mastered Weight Painting(Haven't Spent allot of time using it). So you might have to refer to some tutorials.

Weight Paint will also help on your character mesh I see some folding in the joints on her arms.

Blender takes some time to get use to and I have no idea how long you have been using it, but your already into some fairly advanced stuff. Most beginners use blender for 2 years before even thinking about animation much less rigging and actually animating something.

decent walk animation

I want to see that. If its your first you just might have a natural talent for animation, Manual Animation is almost unheard of these days except for people like use who cant afford to eather build a mocap rig or buy a mocap rig. That's usually the first thing most game developers purchase after developing a successful game.

Last edited by zester (2013-10-11 02:37:39)

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

zester wrote:

I was going to say TD that "Animation" isn't hard "Walk Cycles" are hard, "Organic Movement" is hard especially when you know exactly how the human body moves and reacts to different situations. There is no faking it you eather git it right or you don't.

Note:  For clothing, use the "Shrinkwrap Modifier" and adjust the "Offset" to get a good fit, after parenting the clothes to your rig "Weight Paint" to adjust the amount your clothes deform during movement."  I haven't mastered Weight Painting(Haven't Spent allot of time using it). So you might have to refer to some tutorials.

Weight Paint will also help on your character mesh I see some folding in the joints on her arms.

Blender takes some time to get use to and I have no idea how long you have been using it, but your already into some fairly advanced stuff. Most beginners use blender for 2 years before even thinking about animation much less rigging and actually animating something.

I was able to get a very organic walk cycle with the rig I updated today:
http://forum.maratis3d.com/viewtopic.php?id=764

I also got it to wave. I just threw this model together, but the next one I am going to take my time (which shouldn't be that long). Thanks, I will try out the shrinkwrap modifier. It seems that gemotry with no thickness works better with automatic weight painting. I just threw those shorts on after the fact (wasn't a part of the model.)

I already have a 3d person level with an idle and walking animation (controls also). And I published it and made a logitech game profile for it. (IT WORKS TOO!)

But I want it to have a little more polish before I upload the file so that people can see how it works.

I should have something up either in a few hours or tomorrow.

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

Cool, I am working on Terrains and Level Design.

This is a Platform Type Terrain. It looks small due to the low texture resolution but its actually fairly large. 
There is lots of places to run, jump, climb, fall. There is a couple of tunnels.  Lots of places for traps. If you flip the terrain over you have a completely new Platform Type Terrain and just need to load a new texture map lol.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-XAsHKd4moaM/UlWjRsDk5oI/AAAAAAAABc0/OsKnNWIQCtY/w960-h540-no/screen.png

Last edited by zester (2013-10-11 02:58:52)

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

I like that a lot Zester!
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I was having issues with this one (weight painting), because it seems makeHuman exports geometry that is underneath other geometry. For example, the teeth are behind the head. And automatic weight mapping doesn't get it. So I have to edit the vertex group (best to do this rather than weight painting).

Enough of the female meshes now, I have to get some more male meshes. I will see how they turn out. The first game will be only a male mesh, and the 2nd a male and female one. Or I might do both. We'll see.

Did you do that one in Blender? Makes me want to try a level like that in Sculptris (Not comfortable enough yet with Blender.)

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

Tutorial Doctor wrote:

I like that a lot Zester!
PunBB bbcode test

I was having issues with this one (weight painting), because it seems makeHuman exports geometry that is underneath other geometry. For example, the teeth are behind the head. And automatic weight mapping doesn't get it. So I have to edit the vertex group (best to do this rather than weight painting).

Enough of the female meshes now, I have to get some more male meshes. I will see how they turn out. The first game will be only a male mesh, and the 2nd a male and female one. Or I might do both. We'll see.

Did you do that one in Blender? Makes me want to try a level like that in Sculptris (Not comfortable enough yet with Blender.)

Yah its really easy, all I did was create a "Plane" go into edit mode and "W + 1" <- Subdivide the plane a few times. Then I randomly selected faces and pulled them down and then randomly selected some more faces that haven't been moved yet and pulled them up. Then I went threw and just made hills and ditches more pronounced and rounded. Finally I created a texture and uv mapped it and with a red brush drew a line(path)  and then I went back into edit mode and made the path flat, and where the path meets a hill I made a ledge to climb etc.

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

Here take a look (This is the one I showed you above)https://zester.googlecode.com/files/platform3.blend.zip Note: I didn't include the textures for two reasons 1. There going to be redone and 2. There to big my internet connection is really really bad worse than dial-up.

Here is the start of one.
This one for some reason gives me a outdoors scene "futuristic city half in the ground feel" or a "sci-fi first person shooter(Halo)"
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-46sXquUH848/Uld8b9lloYI/AAAAAAAABew/V8QXXqp5SaU/w869-h489-no/Untitled5.png

Last edited by zester (2013-10-11 04:55:28)

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

Wow! ShrinkWrap modifier is very good for clothes!

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

My animation woes are solved! I was digging around on a hardrive of mine and I found out I still have a copy of Poser 8!

So, my workflow for game animations is solved! I use Poser 8 to make a BVH animation. Export it from poser. Then I import the BVH file into a Blender file that has my rigged Makehuman character in it. I then use the COPY ROTATION bone constraints and BAM!

Poser makes it so easy to animate. I can animate any figure in poser and save the animation out as a BVH file. Blender handles the BVH file very well. I think the best armature to export out of MakeHuman is the GameRig armature, as it is a simple rig.

Edit: Turns out it was my rig that works out better than the Makehuman rig:
http://forum.maratis3d.com/viewtopic.php?id=764

Last edited by Tutorial Doctor (2013-10-17 21:28:27)

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

Tutorial Doctor wrote:

My animation woes are solved! I was digging around on a hardrive of mine and I found out I still have a copy of Poser 8!

So, my workflow for game animations is solved! I use Poser 8 to make a BVH animation. Export it from poser. Then I import the BVH file into a Blender file that has my rigged Makehuman character in it. I then use the COPY ROTATION bone constraints and BAM!

Poser makes it so easy to animate. I can animate any figure in poser and save the animation out as a BVH file. Blender handles the BVH file very well. I think the best armature to export out of MakeHuman is the GameRig armature, as it is a simple rig.

Edit: Turns out it was my rig that works out better than the Makehuman rig:
http://forum.maratis3d.com/viewtopic.php?id=764


And just as I was about to announce that I had solved my Animation problems also, hehe finally figured out how to easily do Walk, Run, Sneek, Creep, and a thousand other types of walk cycles from scratch in Blender. We will have to make some tutorials one on Mocap BVH and one on Traditional Style Animation.

I will start using the rig you posted in your link as my templet.

Last edited by zester (2013-10-17 23:33:53)

Re: Making Character Animation Easier(Tools)

zester wrote:
Tutorial Doctor wrote:

My animation woes are solved! I was digging around on a hardrive of mine and I found out I still have a copy of Poser 8!

So, my workflow for game animations is solved! I use Poser 8 to make a BVH animation. Export it from poser. Then I import the BVH file into a Blender file that has my rigged Makehuman character in it. I then use the COPY ROTATION bone constraints and BAM!

Poser makes it so easy to animate. I can animate any figure in poser and save the animation out as a BVH file. Blender handles the BVH file very well. I think the best armature to export out of MakeHuman is the GameRig armature, as it is a simple rig.

Edit: Turns out it was my rig that works out better than the Makehuman rig:
http://forum.maratis3d.com/viewtopic.php?id=764


And just as I was about to announce that I had solved my Animation problems also, hehe finally figured out how to easily do Walk, Run, Sneek, Creep, and a thousand other types of walk cycles from scratch in Blender. We will have to make some tutorials one on Mocap BVH and one on Traditional Style Animation.

I will start using the rig you posted in your link as my templet.

I would surely like to check out that tutorial. I will do one myself. Getting ready to upload this Car level right now.