Week 7 - 12 Morph Modifier and Animations

To get a good face rig with lots of impressions the use of the morph modifier is a good choice as the mesh can be put into extremes and accessed by the reaction manager.

A great tutorial for everyone to start with morph modifier and face animations can be found here:
http://www.bakaneko.com/howto/computer/3d/rigging/
(not a beginner tutorial basic understanding of the tool sis necessary.. but it is worth it!!!)

For the project I plan to have my character introduce himself and make all kinds of animations which could be used for video games.
The character is talking the audience through the animation sequence.

It will feature run cycles, walk cycles, a jump, a pick up , a gun reload and several lip sync parts.

For my walk and run cycles I used the animators survival kit expanded edition as reference, here is a online tutorial explaining a simple walk cycle and how to block it out:

http://pushingposes.blogspot.com/2008/03/basic-walk-cycle-part-1.html
(He is using the same book as reference as me.)

For the jump i used my own creation as reference as I had animated a jump before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF3NvATylCQ


The pick up animation is done in the same concept of blocking out the key poses and getting the timing right by moving those poses until the timing makes sense. After that I fill in the follow through action and exaggeration to finish the animation off.