how do i get my character to breathe?

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anthillmob007
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by anthillmob007 »

Thank for that...and the Al pacino video was interesting ...initially I was just thinking of my character beathing but now im thinking of also making it match their conversation. :D
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Maestral
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by Maestral »

For those of a thicker skin.... ,)

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Greenlaw
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by Greenlaw »

When I'm uncertain, I seek out reference material. In this case, you have two great resources:

1. YouTube. Enter a search like 'breathing animation reference'. You'll probably get a lot of technical animations which may show you the mechanics of what happens while a person is breathing. You might check out some breathing excercise videos too, to see how different people do it. Most of these exercise are probably not the most natural but you may learn something from the exaggeration. Also, add a plugin like Ant Video Downloader to your browser, which makes it easy to download reference video.

2. Use a video camera, even an iPhone will do, and record yourself 'in character'. You may notice all sorts of subtle motions you weren't aware of before. Try to pick up on the ones that most characteristically say 'breathing'. You may want to exaggerate these motions if it's really important to your story or character. And if you don't have a camera, use a mirror as previously suggested. IMO, video is preferable since I can study motions frame-by-frame or at different speeds.

Naturally, the above tips useful for studying any kind of motion or behavior, not just breathing.

Hope this helps.
anthillmob007
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by anthillmob007 »

Thanks greenlaw. I searched you tube and spotted one or two helpful videos but what I was really after was a video tutorial on how to get my character breathing like the selknam character in anime studio 11.
its not realistic but would look right on my character. when I put up my question I thought someone would point me in the direction of a tutorial ..as I imagined one must already exist but it seems one doesn't.
I will try to study the selknam character .
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Greenlaw
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by Greenlaw »

Oh, okay, you have a technical rigging question then.

I haven't looked closely at that specific rig myself yet but if you have questions about it, Victor (who I believe set up that rig) is the guy to ask. I've had questions about some of his other rigs and he's always been very kind about explaining his 'secrets'. :)

Hopefully, he'll see this post and reply.

My guess is that he's using morphs or transforms linked to a Smart Bone control but that's a complete guess. If I have time today, I'll take a look at it and tell you what I find.

G.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Mon Mar 14, 2016 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Víctor Paredes
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Hi,
I rigged and animated that character, so I can give you some ideas :) (I actually I was writing this before you ever mentioned me...)
To make the breathing, I first acted myself to see how to do it. It's important to exaggerate your movement and check what of your bones are rotating, moving and "scaling".
It's also important to pay attention to the timing. The breathe movement is very slow, maybe three seconds or more to make the entire inhalation and exhalation. Offsetting the movement of the different parts of the body also helps.
So, if I remember well, I started the movement by scaling the belly, then the chest and then moving the arms. All that follows a cycle, but it's offset in that order.
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anthillmob007
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by anthillmob007 »

First off thank you greenlaw your'e really helpful...
secondly hi Victor...I spend most of my time animating full cartoons (each one takes me about a year...the next one is nearly ready) and I stumble when it comes to doing things with smart bones etc ...i tend to botch my way through often doing frame by frame animation when I hit a problem which is why I was really looking for a video tutorial showing me how I could control the breathing with a bone...
im amazed that after looking on you tube I cant find a single one.
I suppose im asking if you could you do a video tutorial of how you added the breathing to your character...and how I can control it with a bone?
if you don't have the time of course ill understand..im one of those guys that knows the basics but struggle with all the clever bits.
I take note of everyones advice about looking at real people breathing....and also how someone breathes when they talk.
John
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funksmaname
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by funksmaname »

if you create a single pose smart bone with a full breath position then you can just animate that bone on the main timeline to breath - use a bezier keyframe type and follow some of the info iwaxana posted in his link to shape the breath curve, breaths aren't linear, especially while talking - but for general purpose you could also 'loop' a breath as long as you need.
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hayasidist
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by hayasidist »

just to flesh out funks comment on smartbone -- the smartbone goes from (say) 0 to 90 degrees; the action is 90 frames long. At frame 0 the character's "breathing" bones / points are set in the action to their "fully exhaled" position and at frame 90 they're set to "fully inhaled". Note the "non-linearity" comment and Victor's remark about "offset" action (IOW elements of the motion start and end at different times) and consider either Bezier interp mode and/or maybe intermediate poses. For an idea on which bones, see my earlier post that lists the ones in the selknam character.

In the timeline to sync breath to vocalisations move this smartbone between say, 30 and 60 timed to the phoneme switch - lwaxana's post is a tremendous help to understand how to do this well - notice that it begins with the same starting point as Slowtiger suggested: the biology of breathing. For slow deep breathing make a (say) 10 second cycle from 0 to 90 and hold at 90 then back to hold 0; for shallow gasping breath (say) a half second cycle from 10 to 20. The best way to get the effect you want is as Greenlaw, Slowtiger and Victor said: look in a mirror or film yourself / someone. To get "cartoon" it's essential to know real world so you can caricature it - IOW exaggerate or play down features.

And as Maestral points out, you won't get to the stars without a load of (your own) sweat.
Dpendleton77
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by Dpendleton77 »

synthsin75 wrote:
anthillmob007 wrote:Todays experience on this forum has told me never ask for help again.
If your skin's so thin, that getting this mild response for a question that basically asks 'how do I animate', you may not be cut out for animation. While most people here try very hard to give positive critiques, YouTube comments and the like will not be so kind.
Yeah but somebody could have pointed in to a tutorial or given him an answer without snark and like he said this is the "how do you" forum,if you can't ask a question then why is this section here? I don't blame him for a being a bit salty and the pandering remark was honestly just foul.
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jahnocli
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by jahnocli »

Despite some snarkiness (I'm as guilty as anyone) I believe the guy received some great advice. That's life -- take the good advice and move on. I've always found this forum to be overwhelmingly positive.
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synthsin75
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by synthsin75 »

Dpendleton77 wrote:Yeah but somebody could have pointed in to a tutorial or given him an answer without snark and like he said this is the "how do you" forum,if you can't ask a question then why is this section here? I don't blame him for a being a bit salty and the pandering remark was honestly just foul.
Unless you've been around awhile, you may not know that people are use to seeing the occasional question that is far too broad to answer. Like 'how do I make anime style cartoon' or something. These kinds of questions seem to imply that the person hasn't tried to either find an answer (google), find enough info to narrow the question, or made any attempt to accomplish the task themselves. Many here view this as lazy, and the response may reflect that.

Not all 'how do I' questions are equal. You're asking potentially busy people and professionals to help. Most are glad to do so, but it's like posting your homework questions on a physics forum. They expect you to show that you've made some attempt to do it yourself. Otherwise, you're basically asking them to give you a class on the subject (which is unreasonable to ask of potentially busy strangers) or do the work for you.

If the OP would have posted a file of their attempts, I doubt there would have been any snark at all.
anthillmob007
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by anthillmob007 »

HI EVERYONE...just going back to my first post again...
I though I was clear in that I wanted my character to breath like selknam ( I wasn't clear because I think a lot of people just read my subject headline that I just wanted to know how to make a character breathe)

I also thought breathing must be common enough in anime studio that someone knew of a video tutorial already and could just point me.
I couldn't see one anywhere...I also wanted to control it with a bone...but im not very technical and hoped the video would cover this.
I'm not going to fall out with anyone on here ...slowtiger or jahnocli for having a dig at me if the question seemed too broad ..or it looked like I wanted everything handed to me on a plate..but I was shocked at the "snark" as some people put it, as this is a, "how do I..?" part of the forum.

Yes I expect people will knock my cartoons on you tube, of course I expect people to call them crap etc...viewers are unforgiving and compare everything with professionally produced stuff they see on tv. they don't care if I have spent three hours a day on it for a year and it lasts ten minutes.
What I didnt expect and what shocked me was getting venom on the anime studio forum ..I thought here I was among friends and even if no one could help me I would at least be encouraged to struggle on.
A lot of the comments on this subject have been really good even though some are over my head without seeing what they are talking about at the same time.

My problem was im something like ten months into my latest cartoon and the last thing I wanted to do was slow down to study something new....I was like...this character is out of breath...I need a quick fix so I can move on...
but obviously I shouldn't expect to go wizzing through it without learning something new.... this is my big fault.

So ....can I please hope that both slowtiger and jahnocli are ok and we can all move on.
John
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funksmaname
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by funksmaname »

people don't tend to hold grudges here... and some are more curmudgeonly than others... but if you keep at it and as you learn re-read the advice in this thread you have everything you need :)

This is actually an interesting subject, and I might consider doing a tutorial on it when I get some time (I've not posted any tutorials for a long time!)

Good luck.
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funksmaname
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Re: how do i get my character to breathe?

Post by funksmaname »

Additionally, the most important and simple thing to remember is OBSERVATION. If you can breath yourself, you can concentrate on what your body does when you do so and exaggerate it. Same thing while talking - if you breath at the same speed while talking you'd only get 2 words out before having to rebreath, it's all there to be observed. Then all that's left is AS mechanics.
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