Character Animation

Autodesk Smoke Tips & Tricks - Character Animation

Here's one of targa file given by our animator 'Wah Chai'. The cartoon character was split out into many pieces, different faces expression, gestures and so on.For simple illustration, i would use the head as example. First, i loaded 3 different heads, and put them into same position. Then add a axisC for controlling the character.

At image1 transparency, put in expression :

if(axisC.position.x==0,0,100)

At image2 transparency, put in expression :
if(axisC.position.x==1,0,100)

At image3 transparency, put in expression :

if(axisC.position.x==2,0,100)

At axisC, set animation to Constant.

Now you can use your axisC 's positionX to control which head you want at anytime.

Provided that if your face is breaking into many small pieces, like nose, eyes, eye brown, mouth, then you can use axisC other parameters like positionY, Z, size X, Y, Z and so on to control each element of the face.

Say if you only got 1 frame of eye, you still can animate it by loading the image several times and twist each differently (size, postion, rotate....), then use the axisC to control it. For hand, you can load the same image few times, then each move forward slightly, between the movement, you can change to other gesture, and then control it with axisC.

Of course, this technique is suitable for cell animation only, if you want to animate the character all by yourself with axis movement, then it's a different story.

Simple Keystroke

Autodesk Smoke Tips & Tricks - Simple Keystroke

Very busy recently, no time to update the blog, here's a very simple keystroke some might not know of :

1. When you hit 'J' (Replace), the clip in desk will stretch to fit the clip lenght in recorder. But if you hit CTRL-J instead, the clip will just replace the clip without stretch. I used this very often to just change a shot between desk and recorder.

2. When i got a long duration clip, and i want to preview it, i could use the pen scroll through the clip. I could also use the stupid 'V' and 'up or down arrow' key to speed up the scroll speed. Another way i used quite often is, just press '5' numeric key then press and hold the 'left or right arrow' key, this will step through the clip every 5 frame, and you can change it very fast by just press another numeric number then press hold the 'left or right arrow' key again.

3. Another key stroke i used often is, if you smoke halt and not respon to any key press or pen move, then use ALT + TAB to call the smoke shell to front, then press CTRL + C to close the smoke.