Many
of you wrote me an E-mail asking
when the shark animation tutorial
is going to be. So here it is. It's
not state of the art animation but
you will see some basic things about
animation that can help you build
your animation skill. To tell you
the truth this is just a simple
animation that needs a lot of addition
work to make it for a showoff. So
anyone who make something that looks
good with this shark, send me a
link, I would like to see what you
done.
So
lets start.
Like
always before entering the software
you need to do your homework on
what you will be animating. We are
lucky, this time it's a shark so
turn on discovery channel and in
a few days you are shark movement
expert. Shark always go straight
forward. There is not much movement.
Just the tail going left to right
and when turning the whole body
bends so it looks like the front
part of the shark is bending in
turning direction..... so we are
going do animate the shark by moving
tail and front part of the body.
Movement should look like this.
Shark is going straight to camera
and when its close turns away from
it. Look at this like the shark
wanted to attack the camera but
change the mine in last second.
This
is the shark model seeing
from Right view. This view
is most suitable for starting
to build skeleton (bones).
We
will create bones and connect
each bone to some part of
the body (mesh). And when
you move a bone part of the
body attached to that bone
is moving with it. Simple,
right.
How
to create bones?
Go
to the Animation/Create
Bones or Systems under Create
panel and click on Bones
button.
Now
click in viewport and one
part of the bone is placed
in place, now click to finish
the bone. Next bone is starting
automatically from the end
of previous one. To stop
creating bones just right
click. When you stop creating
bones a small rectangle
like bone is placed at the
end. Sometimes you will
need this end bone, but
now you can select it and
delete.
Try
to experiment with Bone
Parameters. Select the bone
and change its width, dimension
of fins.... So know every
bone can have a shape of
its own.
Above
you saw some basics. Now to make our
skeleton. Make first bone like the
picture is showing and right click
to stop.And at the end delete that
small bone.
Now
create 4 more. Starting at the start
of first one. Try to mach same connection
points like on the image, and at the
end you can delete that small one
or not. And add one more bone to the
lower part of the tail. That bone
should start at start of last bone.
Bones
are automatically linked to one another.
You can use link tool to link bone
manually. We will do this a little
bit latter.
This
is how the skeleton looks like so
far.
In
Top viewport create two bones inside
fins. Use a picture as reference.
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The
bones are created in horizontal
lane. We need to adjust
vertical bones position.
You can not move bone like
every other element. Select
the second bone. Go to the
Hierarchy panel and check
Affect Pivot Only. Now use
move tool and move that
pivot vertically so the
first bone and start of
second mesh the fin. Do
this for a small end bone
and you will have bones
inside the fin.
