Body Turning

Wondering how to accomplish a certain animation task? Ask here.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Post Reply
Impact
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:19 pm
Contact:

Body Turning

Post by Impact »

Hey everyone, i know theirs alot of tutorials for head turning but I was wondering what methods were commonly sued for body turning. I just got AS7 ( I previously had 5 ) and i find myself using the old methods I used in 5 to do the majority of animating but I really havent explored AS7's new tools that much
User avatar
Víctor Paredes
Site Admin
Posts: 5646
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Barcelona/Chile
Contact:

Post by Víctor Paredes »

I think all the secret is to dissimulate the turn through an action. If you create a good anticipation and reaction, you can even switch from back to front on one frame without losing the fluidity.
I made this one some time ago for a tv commercial, for example
Image

The same principle can be applied with more complex body turns. Plus, a good way to create the sensation of turn is to play with the layer order. If you have each part of the body on a different layer, you can animate the order of layers meanwhile your character moves, that gives the sensation of turn.
On a recent experiment I made a lot of full body turns with a simple character, you can check the movies and anme files here
viewtopic.php?t=17997
Look at the animations on my last post on that thread, there are two body turns, one inside an action and another just of the rotation of a quiet character.
Another tip is to scale the bones. On the simulated 3d space your character is, arms and legs will not have the same length all the time. If your character is pointing directly to the camera, the length of the arm could be even almost zero.

I hope to help you a little.
Image Image Image Image
Moho Product Manager

www.mohoanimation.com
Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
Impact
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:19 pm
Contact:

Post by Impact »

That helps a lot! What Im experimenting with now is having bones from the middle of my charecter out horizontaly and scaleing them to make them look thicker. I also added bones to make the sholders become more pronounced. I dont know If this would work with a normal charector as the one Im working with is just a silouette
Remy
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2010 11:33 am
Location: FRANCE

Post by Remy »

Hello

I'm newbie. Can you explain this detail? How do you make disapear the eye when turning the head?
I hided the bottom white shape and we can see that the second eye is not filled in black. How do you do this. That's a big part of the secret of character turning!!!

Thanks for your help

Remy

[/img]
User avatar
Víctor Paredes
Site Admin
Posts: 5646
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Barcelona/Chile
Contact:

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Remy wrote:I'm newbie. Can you explain this detail? How do you make disapear the eye when turning the head?
Hi, there are a lot of threads about turning head, just search on forum.
Image Image Image Image
Moho Product Manager

www.mohoanimation.com
Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
Impact
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:19 pm
Contact:

Post by Impact »

btw this is what it ended up looking like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_btLfh0Isw
Post Reply