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Paddle/pedal question

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jwalt:
So,



Got me wondering about the best way to handle things like the paddle, which is being operated by two hands, but can only attach to one bone (as far as I know). Something similar would apply to things like bicycle pedals. Any insights?

Raxx:
Moving to the General Anim8or Board.

Object interaction's a tricky one. Anim8or doesn't have any really good solutions like animated parenting and such. You can't parent a separate object to a bone in the Scene Editor or access bone locations/orientations via ASL.

One method is to use a chain of bones kind of like a long arm, looped in a circle starting and ending at the hand, allowing you to animate the paddle out of the hands if need be. This method's a pain, in my opinion :P

Another method, which I would use, is to just animate the paddle as a separate object in the Scene Editor without attaching it to bones or anything. Also painful, but at least you have full control.

I like that a Paddling Cow gets eaten by a Whale ;) Keep up the good work

johnar:
Hello jwalt 



 Always a tricky one, and sorry, no simple answers from me. I haven't come up with a magic rig myself, and would be interested in seeing 1 that works......if its possible.
 
 I've done a couple of pedalling things,
 Hav had to animate legs seperately to the pedals, for one 360 degree turn. (sequence mode) You do the best you can, then go through that sequence, frame by frame, and tweak it where-ever necessary, till you've got it as close as you can get it.
 I've found that arms are actually harder to do than pedalling with legs, as when you've matched up the arms to the thing he might be holding, (oar), then you cant move his body again or the whole top half gets out out sync with the object again.
 I would probly try attaching the oar to one hand, then most of the fine-tweaking, after your first couple of run-throughs,  would be keeping the 'free' hand 'apparently' attached to the oar.
 
One possible way around it would be to have him paddling with one oar. Then you could have a left sequence and a right sequence, and mix them, as you please, in the scene. One oar can be added as an extension to a hand, by  adding 1 or 2 bones  and adding the oar to it. It will still take some fiddling to get it right, but thats the cool thing about having a sequence editor. You only need to make 1 complete cycle, or sequence, and then it can be copied.
  One other thing i've learnt is that, sometimes a character needs more than 1 rig to complete a story.......

davdud101:
It might even be best to just manually do it- e.g., animate the full sequence of rotation for one arm attached to the paddle, then do the other arm, and lastly the paddle based on where the two hands are. I guess you might even do the free arm first.

Honestly though, I haven't been using Anim8or so much lately, so maybe things have changed a bit.

ENSONIQ5:
First of all, great animation!  The whale surfacing and swallowing the cow gave me a good laugh, it's always good to see Anim8or used for actual animation and you've obviously good a good eye for comedic timing.  Unfortunately I have to agree with previous responders, ain't no easy way to do this in Anim8or.  My personal preference is to keep the figure and paddle separate, as davdud101 suggests, however I would animate the paddle first, then animate the figure to suit.

Animating the paddle on it's own in Scene mode is relatively easy, you can get a pretty good paddle action happening with relatively few keyframes.  Animating your figure's arms is obviously much more difficult as it involves at least three joints per arm (shoulder, elbow and wrist), two of which are 3-axis joints, giving 14 separate parameters that need to be animated.  With the paddle already animated this job becomes a bit easier, as the paddle provides a positioning reference for the hands (this would be a LOT easier with inverse kinematics... hopefully this will be completed and enabled in future versions).  Keeping the paddle as a separate Scene element also allows you to treat it separately from the figure, for example if you want your figure to let go of an object.

The test animation below was done this way, however I added one extra step that made things much easier.  After animating the paddle and matching the figure's hands to it every 12 frames or thereabouts, I removed all the paddle's keyframes and re-animated it to suit the hands, with keyframes in every 6th frame.  As mentioned, it was obviously much easier to animate the paddle in so many keyframes than all 14 figure parameters, and it allowed a close(ish) match between paddle and hands.  So in effect, the paddle coarsely defined the motion of the arms & hands, and the arms & hands then closely defined the motion of the paddle.

To ensure all the figure's bones are available to animate in Scene mode, I added a single-frame T-pose sequence in the first frame (I left it in but this would normally be edited out).  A second single-frame sequence with relaxed arms was added towards the end, after the paddle is dropped.  All animation in between is done in Scene mode rather than sequences, this is very tedious but it does give precise control.  It's worth spending the time, though you'll want to plan your animation well because once you have a lot of keyframes it's not so easy to move things about.



NOTE:  This animation is far from perfect but hopefully it demonstrates what I'm talking about.  The figure ("Eraser Man") is from a previous animation I did some years ago, it's about time he got off his backside and actually did something, the lazy little blighter...!

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