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General Anim8or Forum / Re: Suggestions for creating uniform animation, for non-uniform shapped eyes.
« on: August 16, 2010, 08:26:27 pm »
It's funny that the inherent geometry of a cartoon-ish character is more 'complex' in terms of visual dynamism than a realistic face because everything has to squash and stretch in 'unnatural' ways. I read that Terranim8or7101 can create animated textures, so I may check that out...it was also a good suggestion however, to model the eye-socket/eyelids to create the illusion that the eyes are elongated (like they seem to have done in 'Coraline') so I'll give that a try too. Thanks for the suggestion on syncing the eyes ENSONIQ5. though I haven't messed around much yet with controllers. BTW Johnar, I liked that little guy in your Morphing tutorial, the one with the Angelina Jolie lips.
. I've searched for methods of accomplishing this...the most popular with other 3d animation software seems to involve lattices...whereas Anim8or does not have this option (though that would be the icing on the cake if it did) the only other way to accomplish this would be to manually morph a pupil over the surface of the eye, or somehow move a texture in real-time. I'm in favor of moving the pupil...however, when my first run at this was disastrous as it mostly just 'vanished' while settling into its final position, or simply did not align properly with the contour. I've also tried attaching the pupil to the rest of the eye morphing the entire thing...but then the eye itself looked wonky, like it had an extra bit just sort of poking out from the rest. If anyone has an idea of how to better accomplish the effect, or anyway I can more effectively utilize current available options, I'd really appreciate some input.
Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner, been working a lot. I gave what you described a go...it wasn't so much that I couldn't understand it all...but more that anim8or's key-framing has been really tricky for me. Timing in particular: when I wanted one leg to go down after another one had risen up...the movement of both legs executed too soon or too late and threw the rhythm for the whole sequence off. At other times legs that I hadn't even done anything with yet would move for no reason at all, even though I'd already keyed them in the proper position. If you would upload a project file for me, I'd really appreciate that. Seeing how you keyed everything will be of great help in future endeavors as well. Thanks in advance for your time 
it's just very difficult to visualize and orient more than two legs at a time, esp. for a first time animator. If anyone has experience in this area, I would really appreciate something as basic as a short key-framed skeleton of just the legs themselves moving...nothing fancy, but enough to get the general idea. In this instance, the legs would only have to have two segments, plus the 'foot'. Much appreciation in advance for anyone's time.