Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
This iniial pose must be repeated at frame 41, to really get the cycling efect.
17. With all the bones selected, let's locate the three butons to the extreme right-
hand side of the header of the 3D View and click on the one on the left to copy the
current pose. Now let's go to frame 41 (press the up arrow key four imes) and click
on the buton showing the white arrow coming out from the clipboard to paste the
exact same pose.
18. Now go to frame 21 (press the down arrow key twice) and click on the rightmost
buton on the header of the 3D View to paste the mirrored pose. We can now go to
the Timeline, click on the play buton to get the basic animaion playing, and rotate
around the 3D View to see the "sliding" walk cycle that we have now.
Having created these three key poses of our character, we have completed this task. In the
next one, we'll work on adding breakdown poses to improve the transiion between key
poses. Remember to save the file now.
Objective Complete - Mini Debriefing
In this task, we worked only on deining the three key poses for our animaion. As we are
creaing a walk cycle, we just created a base pose on frame 1, copied it into the clipboard,
and then pasted it into frame 41 and its mirror into frame 21.
The whole idea behind these key poses is that they deine the acion of our character.
Even when lacking good breakdowns to go from one pose to the next, the acion is clearly
recognizable and starts taking shape. This way of organizing the process is quite useful,
since it gives a clear progression from start to finish.
One of the nicest things that we did was using the smart paste of poses, including the
mirrored paste, which depends on the correct naming of the bones; that's the reason we
used the
.L
and
.R
suixes on the bones when creaing the armature.
Classified Intel
There are two basic methods for animaing, the irst is called "straight ahead" and the
second one is "pose-to-pose". Each one has its advantages and disadvantages, of course,
and it's also possible to work using some type of mix of the two.
The straight ahead method is about posing the character following the low of ime, in
chronological order. This method allows the animator to improvise but has the disadvantage
of not having the iming and the low of acion clear from the beginning, which can be risky
and can easily get out of control.
