Tutorial: Modelling a mech part 3
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Contents |
Introduction
As a final step, we want to make our model move. I'm going to explain you how to make a (somewhat) realistic walking animation. I will first explain how to setup DeleD for animating, and then I'll tell you how make an animation. Make sure that you know the basics of 3d animation first (How keyframes work etc...). Take a look at Jeroen's animation tutorial if you don't know how they work.
Customize DeleD for animation
First, you have to customize DeleD a little so it will be easier for you to create animations. We start off by making the skeletal animation editor visible (View -> Skeletal Animation Editor). Make sure it's in the bottom of your screen.
Next, we want our scene inspector to be visible (View -> Scene inspector) I've docked it at the left side of the screen.
It's might be a good idea to maximize one of the viewports. In this case, we will be using the side-view quite alot, so maximize that one.
You should end up with this setup:
A new animation
Now I'll show how to create a new animation. We do this by clicking "Animation" in the Item creation panel. We must select our skeleton, so that DeleD knows which skeleton we want to animate. Recall that selecting a skeleton is just a matter of selecting one of it's joints. It doens't matter which one.
The default animation settings are fine:
Frames per second = 30
Number of frames = 30
So we can click "Create" now. You should see an new animation appear in the
scene inspector now. Click on it!
Make sure that your skeleton is in the "default pose". In this case, you mech should be standing with both feet on the "ground" (The XZ-plane that is), in a neutral position.
Now you are ready to create some keyframes. Read Jeroen's tutorial if you are not familiar with the concept of keyframes. I'll not explain that here.
Make sure the slide is at Frame 0:
Click Animation -> Set keyframe. This will save the current joint positions as a Keyframe. You should see a tiny blue rectangle under the slide.
Now move the slide to the very end, and click Animation -> Set Keyframe again.
You should end up with this:
By doing this we make sure that the animation starts off with the "default pose" and also ends with it. In video games you often see sequences of animations. For example, you see a guy running, shooting, jumping and running again. To make this sequence of animations look realistic, it's a good idea to make each one begin with the default pose and end with it. Otherwise your animations would look choppy when played in a sequence.
You can hit the play button, but you won't see anything move. Let's change that.
The walking motion
Finally, we can start animating the whole thing. I'll not go into details here though, but I will give you a basic idea of what I did.
This is my workflow:
- Start with the first frame. (We've allready created a keyframe here)
- Copy the keyframe. (Animation -> Copy Keyframe).
- Paste it a few frames further. (Animation -> Paste keyframe -> Before or After (doesn't really matter)).
- Rotate some joints until the skeleton has the desired pose.
- Copy the keyframe.
- Paste it a few frames further.
- Rotate some joints...
- Copy... etc etc... You know what I mean. :)
For a walking motion you will need 8 or 9 keyframes. My walking motion is not continuous. My mech takes two steps forward and puts its feet next to each other. Here's what I did:
The first frame is the default pose. We created this (and the last) keyframe in the previous section of this tutorial part.
I made the right leg take the first step. Rotate the hip joint and lift the knee. Make the left foot move slightly backwards.
Now select the root joint and move it a little closer to the floor (The robot's head is lower when his legs are spread). Now you should adjust the legs accordingly. Lower the right foot a little bit, and move the left foot backwards (by using rotate on the joints ofcourse).
The left heel should go upwards, while it's are toes still on the ground. The right foot should move a little to the back until it stands on the ground.
The right foot lifts so that it's knee points forward. The left foot is on the ground and keeps the mech balanced.
Move the right foot backward and let the left foot make the next step forward. Th head moves down again.
Put the left foot down in the front. The right foot is about to lift now.
The right foot is lifted, while the robot is standing on its left foot.
Now return to the default pose. The mech will put his feat next to eachother.
Finally, here are some tips on how to make a good walking motion:
- Make sure that the time between the different keyframes is almost equal. Delete some frames if you feel that some parts of the animation take too much time.
- Take a good look at your own walking motion. That should help you distinguish the different keyframes in the animation.
- Pay attention to the details. For example: Let the body move down when the legs are spread and up when it is standing upright.
Also take a good look at the position of the toes.
Finally
That's it. Hope you've enjoyed this tutorial. Feel free to comment on the forum. If you made some robot walk, I'd love to see it. ;)
