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: So Now Then...
Yeah, so I decided to create a new Livejournal account. The old one will still be active and will contain all of my evil opinions. This one, however, is an online diary devoted entirely to what currently occupies most of my spare time: animation. Specifically, this will be for progress report updates on this nifty little film I'm making (and have been trying to get off the ground for eight years) called "Plastic Castles."
I'll periodically post here when I figure out some cool new thing, and to get opinions from people on how things are shaping up. Basically, as I slowly figure out how to do this stuff, I'll update you on what new crap I'm learning.
First order of business: Tails.
I'd been having problems with the motion of tails. Specifically:
Obviously, just moving back-and-forth like that isn't too realistic. In real fish, the tail movement actually appears to originate in the mid-spine region, and ripples out to the tail creating more of a whipping motion. The end of the tail, being far thinner than the base, has to catch up with the rest of the tail, usually a bit late. If you take a look at "Finding Nemo," you notice this in smaller movements, and larger movements, while still following the same principles, create a more graceful-looking motion.
My problem was in the simplicity of the skeletal structure. The rear of the spine contained only four bones, and the tail only two. The entire rear portion of the fish had only one control point at the far end of the tail.
So, I shrunk the size of the bones and made twelve instead of six, and added a control for the end of the spine, the mid-tail region, and the end of the tail, and got this:
This shows the more graceful, slower motion I spoke of in "Nemo." I'll post one of the smaller ripple movements tomorrow.
Yeah, so I decided to create a new Livejournal account. The old one will still be active and will contain all of my evil opinions. This one, however, is an online diary devoted entirely to what currently occupies most of my spare time: animation. Specifically, this will be for progress report updates on this nifty little film I'm making (and have been trying to get off the ground for eight years) called "Plastic Castles."
I'll periodically post here when I figure out some cool new thing, and to get opinions from people on how things are shaping up. Basically, as I slowly figure out how to do this stuff, I'll update you on what new crap I'm learning.
First order of business: Tails.
I'd been having problems with the motion of tails. Specifically:
Obviously, just moving back-and-forth like that isn't too realistic. In real fish, the tail movement actually appears to originate in the mid-spine region, and ripples out to the tail creating more of a whipping motion. The end of the tail, being far thinner than the base, has to catch up with the rest of the tail, usually a bit late. If you take a look at "Finding Nemo," you notice this in smaller movements, and larger movements, while still following the same principles, create a more graceful-looking motion.
My problem was in the simplicity of the skeletal structure. The rear of the spine contained only four bones, and the tail only two. The entire rear portion of the fish had only one control point at the far end of the tail.
So, I shrunk the size of the bones and made twelve instead of six, and added a control for the end of the spine, the mid-tail region, and the end of the tail, and got this:
This shows the more graceful, slower motion I spoke of in "Nemo." I'll post one of the smaller ripple movements tomorrow.