Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Changing how I animate.....kind of

This is one only my fellow animators are going to get. I am currently working on my first completely FK (Foward Kinematics) shot. Most of the rigs here at Disney allow us to switch between IK and FK throughout the animation. I've dabbled a bit with FK, but this is the first time I have animated with it completely. Of course, it's not necessary. Steve Meyers here at Disney never uses FK and his stuff is always amazing but some of the guys that came from Pixar use it a lot and I'm trying to take some pointers from them as well. In the future I will continue to use both, but since this shot is turning out quite well, I will definitely start using the FK a little more. Its interesting, there are a lot of really talented animators at Disney and none of them animate the same way. I always assumed that there was some all brilliant method for creating great animation but nope, ............don't even get me started on weighted tangents.

8 comments:

Bobby Pontillas said...
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Bobby Pontillas said...

Likewise, I used to work exclusively in IK because its always been faster and more precise for me pose out arms that way.

But to fight the marionette feeling I tended to get, What I end up doing is blocking out my poses with IK Arms, and then converting it to FK so its still hitting those poses but the movement inbetween is moving in an "FK fashion" where you feel the upper arm driving the forearm , etc, etc. Kinda weird.

But It is interesting to see how different everyones workflow can be, maybe you can attribute that to the wide variety of backgrounds. From guys n gals who started out in 2D, stop-mo, or were strictly 3D.

Adam Strick said...

hahaha
Awesome! Now when the day eventually comes that you go back to Avalanche maybe you'll be another voice in the, "we need FK..." argument! You still haven't switched to weighted tangents, huh? You're definitely right though, there are SO many ways about doing things so whatever works best for you and you're not having many problems so run with it! It's very cool to hear that you're experimenting with your workflow.

Hyrum Virl Osmond said...

OH, I AM using weighted tangents. It's surprising to me how many animators don't though.

Adam Ford said...

It's all Chinese to me but it is fun (looking through your posts) that your love of film hasn't wavered!

Nathan Lindsay said...

hyrum, weighted tangents don't work in the game engine...you know that.

Adam Strick said...

Oh wow, that surprises me due to what Nathan said. lol

Hyrum Virl Osmond said...

Wait...I was under the impression that you guys had the new animation system working. Doesn't that include things such as tangents transferring over to the engine?

Tell me you guys aren't still compressing......Tell me!!!!