Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Animation Keys
The preparaion steps are done, our armature is ready to be animated. In this irst part, we
will work on creaing the main poses of the walk cycle, which are the staring points of the
process.
Getting ready
Since we'll be working on animaion, it's beter to use a diferent screen; let's go to the
screens drop-down list (next to the
Help
item of the main menu) and select the Animaion
screen. Then let's go down to the Timeline and enable the recording buton (automaic
keyframe inserion for
Objects
and
Bones
). Let's set the end frame to 40 (
End
parameter,
to the left of the recording icon) as well.
It's also important to know what the editors on the left-hand side panel do—the upper one
is the
Dope Sheet
and the lower one is the
Graph Editor
. The
Dope Sheet
is the primary
visualizaion tool for animaion keys that we will be insering; each key gets represented by
a diamond and each row corresponds to one bone of the armature of the character. The
Graph Editor
is used to control the exact shape of the curve, defining the way a certain
property of a bone (rotaion, locaion) changes from one value to the next. A good way
to explain how these editors work together can be to think of the
Dope Sheet
as the one
where we deine poses in ime and the
Graph Editor
as the one in which we work on
reining the transformaion that happens between poses.
Engage Thrusters
1.
Let's go to the 3D Viewport and switch to
Right View
(
View → Right
), then select
the armature and make sure that it's in
Pose Mode
to start working with it. Let's
also make sure that we are in frame 1 of our animaion (check the label of the
green, verical bar of the
Dope Sheet
) and set the view mode to
Orthographic
(
View → View Persp/Ortho
, if it's in perspecive).
Select the
footIK.L
bone and move it -0.65 units along the Y Axis (
G
key,
Y
key, then
type
-0.65
), noice that the autokeying opion has inserted the keyframes for this
bone for us.
2.
Now let's select the
footIK.R
bone and move it 0.69 units along the Y axis (
G
key,
Y
key, then type
0.69
). This will cause the left foot of the character to be put in front
and the right foot to move behind.
3.
4.
Now select the
spine1
bone and move it -0.18 units along the Z axis (
G
key,
Z
key,
then type
-0.18
) to get the feet touching the IK controllers and have a litle bending
on the knees.
