Site Search
Join Muvizu
Messages in this topic - RSS

Home ? Feedback ? Moving limbs

pages: 1 2 | the topic is closed
30/05/2012 20:06:27

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Perhaps we could have an option to manually move the limbs, similar to the eye and head movement. Elbows, shoulders and fingers, that is all we really need for now...
Do you agree?dunno
permalink
30/05/2012 20:53:07

mystoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
mysto
Posts: 471 		I think that would be a great option!
permalink
30/05/2012 20:56:49

DyllyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dylly
Posts: 555 		i agree
permalink
30/05/2012 21:21:34

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Thanks!Thumbs Up
permalink
30/05/2012 22:11:01

DreekoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dreeko
Posts: 1257 		This one has come up before I'm sure. It would be nice to see but it would increase the creation time greatly if we had to do a direction/animation pass for every joint.

I would firstly like to see all upper body animations available for both sitting and standing modes. It's really annoying when you go to animate a character doing something and discover that the action is greyed out because he is sitting down and it is a standing animation!
In addition to this it would be nice if we could have the option to freeze one arm during character direction and freeze the other for a second direction. Yes, I know that another timeline would be required for the additional limb direction but the advantage of this system would be a substantial increase in the variety of animations possible purely from combining the existing ones and also, when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.
...or worse! We CAN use all the animations when they are holding objects and the spear holding character starts moving both arms all over the place cause he's performing a conversation animation.

Thoughts on this anyone?

Edit: There is one extra move I'd like to see.
..head tilt!
The head can move up and down and side to side and everything in between but the ability to tilt the head to one side isn't there!
It's amazing the emotion that can be conveyed from this simple movement.
Yip, head tilt please!

Cheers
D
edited by Dreeko on 30/05/2012
permalink
31/05/2012 00:24:14

mystoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
mysto
Posts: 471 		Dreeko wrote:
This one has come up before I'm sure. It would be nice to see but it would increase the creation time greatly if we had to do a direction/animation pass for every joint.

I would firstly like to see all upper body animations available for both sitting and standing modes. It's really annoying when you go to animate a character doing something and discover that the action is greyed out because he is sitting down and it is a standing animation!
In addition to this it would be nice if we could have the option to freeze one arm during character direction and freeze the other for a second direction. Yes, I know that another timeline would be required for the additional limb direction but the advantage of this system would be a substantial increase in the variety of animations possible purely from combining the existing ones and also, when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.
...or worse! We CAN use all the animations when they are holding objects and the spear holding character starts moving both arms all over the place cause he's performing a conversation animation.

Thoughts on this anyone?

Edit: There is one extra move I'd like to see.
..head tilt!
The head can move up and down and side to side and everything in between but the ability to tilt the head to one side isn't there!
It's amazing the emotion that can be conveyed from this simple movement.
Yip, head tilt please!

Cheers
D
edited by Dreeko on 30/05/2012


What He Said
permalink
31/05/2012 05:47:07

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975 		i agree

Separation of upper and lower body animations is the logical next step and would help enormously. Also separation of head and body animations - i.e. I want to point forward but with a sad face. Again a much simpler task for the Devs than individual finger animation, but would give us so much more with the animations we already have.

I'm just animating a conversation between two characters and keep having to close crop the shot on one of them as I keep having to make him stand up to get the animations I require.
permalink
31/05/2012 07:07:09

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Dreeko wrote:
This one has come up before I'm sure. It would be nice to see but it would increase the creation time greatly if we had to do a direction/animation pass for every joint.

I would firstly like to see all upper body animations available for both sitting and standing modes. It's really annoying when you go to animate a character doing something and discover that the action is greyed out because he is sitting down and it is a standing animation!
In addition to this it would be nice if we could have the option to freeze one arm during character direction and freeze the other for a second direction. Yes, I know that another timeline would be required for the additional limb direction but the advantage of this system would be a substantial increase in the variety of animations possible purely from combining the existing ones and also, when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.
...or worse! We CAN use all the animations when they are holding objects and the spear holding character starts moving both arms all over the place cause he's performing a conversation animation.

Thoughts on this anyone?

Edit: There is one extra move I'd like to see.
..head tilt!
The head can move up and down and side to side and everything in between but the ability to tilt the head to one side isn't there!
It's amazing the emotion that can be conveyed from this simple movement.
Yip, head tilt please!

Cheers
D
edited by Dreeko on 30/05/2012


i agree
permalink
31/05/2012 11:16:20

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		MrDrWho13 wrote:
Perhaps we could have an option to manually move the limbs, similar to the eye and head movement. Elbows, shoulders and fingers, that is all we really need for now...
Do you agree?dunno



It's something we've considered, giving "puppetry" controls for characters. So it's on the post-it note list of requests already. I think there are a lot of complications with this. Dreeko mentioned a few - the extra tracks on the timeline and potentially the additional time required to animated the whole character. There are a few others such as user interface to control limbs and body as well as the mix and match of the existing animations with puppetry animations.

--
Direct, don't animate!
permalink
31/05/2012 11:24:48

DreekoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dreeko
Posts: 1257 		Jamie!
What do you think of the limb freezing idea?
permalink
31/05/2012 11:31:47

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Dreeko wrote:
I would firstly like to see all upper body animations available for both sitting and standing modes.


Yeah, that really does bug me as well.

Dreeko wrote:
In addition to this it would be nice if we could have the option to freeze one arm during character direction and freeze the other for a second direction.


Interesting one Dreeko. Not sure how freezing one arm would work - I guess it'd have to be the character's current mood's idle animation for the "un-animated" arm

Dreeko wrote:
when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.


Err.. I don't follow what you mean here. Hmm?

Dreeko wrote:
...or worse! We CAN use all the animations when they are holding objects and the spear holding character starts moving both arms all over the place cause he's performing a conversation animation.


Possibly this is actually making things more complex? It's certainly one of the challenges with character and object interactions. How does a character hold all the different things it possibly could and be animated in ways that look good and suitable? On the other hand, maybe that crazyness is the effect someone wants in their movie?

Dreeko wrote:
..head tilt! The head can move up and down and side to side and everything in between but the ability to tilt the head to one side isn't there!



Now that is an interesting one. It could be very useful.

--
Direct, don't animate!
permalink
31/05/2012 11:32:17

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Dreeko wrote:
Jamie!
What do you think of the limb freezing idea?

Give me a chance to reply :P

--
Direct, don't animate!
permalink
31/05/2012 12:00:25

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		ukBerty wrote:
Separation of upper and lower body animations is the logical next step and would help enormously. Also separation of head and body animations - i.e. I want to point forward but with a sad face. Again a much simpler task for the Devs than individual finger animation, but would give us so much more with the animations we already have.



We already have separation of the upper and lower body for animations, its just that the lower body can only be animated independently of the upper with movement. So you can record an animation like the scared jump over the top of movement and then only the top half will do the scared animation while the lower does the movement stuff. It certainly would be nice to have some legs only animations but that'd require another animation track I guess. I like the idea though!

Also we're in the process of making a system for mixing animations with moods, but that's likely to be limited to the new characters at first.

--
Direct, don't animate!
permalink
31/05/2012 12:48:14

DreekoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dreeko
Posts: 1257 		Jamie wrote:
Dreeko wrote:
when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.


Err.. I don't follow what you mean here. Hmm?


All I meant was - A limb freeze (or left and right arm timeline option) would allow us to animate without being prevented from doing so (ie greyed out) due to the chosen animation being unsuitable because the character is holding an object.
Jamie wrote:
Possibly this is actually making things more complex? It's certainly one of the challenges with character and object interactions. How does a character hold all the different things it possibly could and be animated in ways that look good and suitable? On the other hand, maybe that crazyness is the effect someone wants in their movie?


Yes someone may want the flaying around crazyness and if they did then the two arm method of direction would be the prefered choice.
When it comes to the variety of objects and how best to hold them, then a selection of object character poses would have to be created I would imagine from small handheld ones (mobile phone, bag of chips etc) to medium sized (laptop, shopping bags etc) to large ones.

Or perhaps the route to take when it comes to object holding poses would be to create a series of character morph targets which would take into account the size and weight of the object held and have them graduated on two sliders one for weight and another for size.

Weight slider - So at one end of the scale you could have the character with a mobile phone pose (held to the ear). Move the slider for weight towards the heavy end and the character would have to drop his hand further down until his arm is fully extended downwards with shoulder dropped and a slight lean toward the side of the held object

Size slider - Starting again with the phone to the ear pose at the small end of the size scale and moving along to a larger object the character would gradually move his hand downward as if the object had become bigger, possibly palms upward at mid point to accommodate the larger size. Move further along the size scale and the character would bring out his other arm to hold the expanding object. If the weight slider/scale were used as well then obviously the character's pose would morph to show this.

Thoughts on this anyone (take your time Jamie )

Cheers
D
permalink
31/05/2012 15:59:41

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Jamie wrote:
Dreeko wrote:
I would firstly like to see all upper body animations available for both sitting and standing modes.


Yeah, that really does bug me as well.

Dreeko wrote:
In addition to this it would be nice if we could have the option to freeze one arm during character direction and freeze the other for a second direction.


Interesting one Dreeko. Not sure how freezing one arm would work - I guess it'd have to be the character's current mood's idle animation for the "un-animated" arm

Dreeko wrote:
when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.


Err.. I don't follow what you mean here. Hmm?

Dreeko wrote:
...or worse! We CAN use all the animations when they are holding objects and the spear holding character starts moving both arms all over the place cause he's performing a conversation animation.


Possibly this is actually making things more complex? It's certainly one of the challenges with character and object interactions. How does a character hold all the different things it possibly could and be animated in ways that look good and suitable? On the other hand, maybe that crazyness is the effect someone wants in their movie?

Dreeko wrote:
..head tilt! The head can move up and down and side to side and everything in between but the ability to tilt the head to one side isn't there!



Now that is an interesting one. It could be very useful.



I agree with the head tilting idea, that isn't too difficult, is it?
permalink
31/05/2012 16:04:30

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Dreeko wrote:
Jamie wrote:
Dreeko wrote:
when we do reach the stage where characters can hold objects,this will allow us to animate without the dreaded greyed out experience which I assume would be the order of the day if we retain the existing pose restricted choices.


Err.. I don't follow what you mean here. Hmm?


All I meant was - A limb freeze (or left and right arm timeline option) would allow us to animate without being prevented from doing so (ie greyed out) due to the chosen animation being unsuitable because the character is holding an object.
Jamie wrote:
Possibly this is actually making things more complex? It's certainly one of the challenges with character and object interactions. How does a character hold all the different things it possibly could and be animated in ways that look good and suitable? On the other hand, maybe that crazyness is the effect someone wants in their movie?


Yes someone may want the flaying around crazyness and if they did then the two arm method of direction would be the prefered choice.
When it comes to the variety of objects and how best to hold them, then a selection of object character poses would have to be created I would imagine from small handheld ones (mobile phone, bag of chips etc) to medium sized (laptop, shopping bags etc) to large ones.

Or perhaps the route to take when it comes to object holding poses would be to create a series of character morph targets which would take into account the size and weight of the object held and have them graduated on two sliders one for weight and another for size.

Weight slider - So at one end of the scale you could have the character with a mobile phone pose (held to the ear). Move the slider for weight towards the heavy end and the character would have to drop his hand further down until his arm is fully extended downwards with shoulder dropped and a slight lean toward the side of the held object

Size slider - Starting again with the phone to the ear pose at the small end of the size scale and moving along to a larger object the character would gradually move his hand downward as if the object had become bigger, possibly palms upward at mid point to accommodate the larger size. Move further along the size scale and the character would bring out his other arm to hold the expanding object. If the weight slider/scale were used as well then obviously the character's pose would morph to show this.

Thoughts on this anyone (take your time Jamie )

Cheers
D


Yes, I love the idea of weight and size, but I'm sure that there will be a few glitches when you do both at the same time.Lamer noob
permalink
01/06/2012 12:18:40

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Dreeko wrote:
Weight slider.....
Size slider....



I've thought about this size and weight slider a fair bit and I just can't see how it'd be a practical solution. The problem I see is with how would these properties affect things.

Ok, it's easy to imagine that a heavy object would mean the characters arms are not as high as they would be with a light object and that a larger object would cause the arms to move further away from the rest of the body to accommodate the larger size.

The weight aspect seems unneeded. If you had a super hero, you'd expect that even the heaviest of objects to be handled effortlessly and a wimp character to struggle with the lightest thing, so over all that'd be covered with the animations chosen for the situation the character is in. If you had to go through each object attach to the character and setup the weight of it for the right effect it might be a bit time consuming and easy to get the wrong results without realising.

There is a size slider already, we call it scale. The problem, I see anyway, is with the technology. How could the animation be changed, on the fly, to suit different sizes? If you have a really massive object (a 1980's mobile phone, for example) you'd still expect the character to place it at it's ear but the animation would need to be adjusted to allow the hand to be further away from the ear to allow space for the phone, which in turn means a different angle on the elbow joint and in turn a different angle on the shoulder joint and possibly a different angle on several other joints to make the holding action look right. A weird situation might be the character holding a large, heavy box over it's head, both hands would need to be used and you wouldn't be able to just have the arms go as low as the weight would suggest, due to the rest of the body below.

Ok, that's all a bit garbled but I think there is a more elegant solution to be found, that gives a simpler interface without causing to much extra things for users to do. I'm not against size or weight sliders if there's a practical plan on how it'd work, but it might be worth one of the animators or devs confirming if that sort of thing is possible with the technology we're using.

--
Direct, don't animate!
permalink
01/06/2012 13:28:02

DreekoMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Dreeko
Posts: 1257 		Jamie wrote:
Dreeko wrote:
Weight slider.....
Size slider....



I've thought about this size and weight slider a fair bit and I just can't see how it'd be a practical solution. The problem I see is with how would these properties affect things.

Ok, it's easy to imagine that a heavy object would mean the characters arms are not as high as they would be with a light object and that a larger object would cause the arms to move further away from the rest of the body to accommodate the larger size.

The weight aspect seems unneeded. If you had a super hero, you'd expect that even the heaviest of objects to be handled effortlessly and a wimp character to struggle with the lightest thing, so over all that'd be covered with the animations chosen for the situation the character is in. If you had to go through each object attach to the character and setup the weight of it for the right effect it might be a bit time consuming and easy to get the wrong results without realising.

There is a size slider already, we call it scale. The problem, I see anyway, is with the technology. How could the animation be changed, on the fly, to suit different sizes? If you have a really massive object (a 1980's mobile phone, for example) you'd still expect the character to place it at it's ear but the animation would need to be adjusted to allow the hand to be further away from the ear to allow space for the phone, which in turn means a different angle on the elbow joint and in turn a different angle on the shoulder joint and possibly a different angle on several other joints to make the holding action look right. A weird situation might be the character holding a large, heavy box over it's head, both hands would need to be used and you wouldn't be able to just have the arms go as low as the weight would suggest, due to the rest of the body below.

Ok, that's all a bit garbled but I think there is a more elegant solution to be found, that gives a simpler interface without causing to much extra things for users to do. I'm not against size or weight sliders if there's a practical plan on how it'd work, but it might be worth one of the animators or devs confirming if that sort of thing is possible with the technology we're using.


I do see how the points that you raise could make the weight slider impractical.

Perhaps a height slider for the arms would be a better solution. That way you could just adjust the arm/s from over head to held out front to down by the side and the object scale slider would still cope with the other aspect of whether it was a small object requiring only one hand or a large one requiring two.

Thanks for your interest on this btw

Cheers
D
permalink
01/06/2012 14:34:51

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Dreeko wrote:
I do see how the points that you raise could make the weight slider impractical.

Perhaps a height slider for the arms would be a better solution. That way you could just adjust the arm/s from over head to held out front to down by the side and the object scale slider would still cope with the other aspect of whether it was a small object requiring only one hand or a large one requiring two.

Thanks for your interest on this btw

Cheers
D



I'm really interested in this, it'd be amazing to finally have characters holding objects in Muvizu. It's a really awkward thing to consider though. There are so many things and ways to hold things. The most common request seems to be guns, so if you take that example, and for simplicity lets consider only a revolver as shown in -


The most common use is to shoot the gun, as can be seen about 50s into the video. Another option, equally as valid, would be to pistol whip the cop, this would need another set of animations as well as hand positions for holding the gun. Then you might want one character to give the gun to another character or even to hide the gun behind a trash can or take it out of the holster or put it back. So there is 4 or 5 ways to hold and use that one gun, at an initial consideration. Once you start considering rifles, swords, spears, coffee mugs or tea cups or pencils or flowers or .... well you understand. Once you consider the possibilities then the number of options required to be available it all gets a bit overwhelming. It's kinda what was started with the musical instrument system, each instrument has a set of animations associated with it and (with the exception of drums and keyboard) an attachment the character can wear and use.

Moviestorm seems to take this type of approach as well but I don't know the underlying organisation of their "held object" system to say how they organise animations for attachments. iClone i'm even less sure of but I'd guess it's more complex. The one I know more about is secondlife, there you basically create your own animation file, import it and either make or get the object you want to use and write scripts to tell the character model where the object is attached, what animations are played when and for how long. Obviously that's a level of complexity Muvizu would like to avoid as it really starts to get away from the whole "Direct - don't animate" thing. Simplicity is the key really.

One thing I'd like to see is character interactions with the environment, such as drinking from a glass. This clip is from Mass Effects 2 - which also uses the unreal engine, the difference with a game and Muvizu is that the art and dev guys can script the whole sequence once without worrying about letting the user direct when, where, what, how or who does the action.



--
Direct, don't animate!
permalink
01/06/2012 15:08:37

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975 		I'm wondering if we're all looking for the perfect "works in all situations" solution rather than just getting something that can be useful. I know that Muvizu don't like compromises but we can take a method that is not perfect and could produce some odd results and just make the best of it. Trust us.

I am struggling to see the problem with having an attached item property to the hand with rotation and location controls. Look at the axe in the head for a reference - we want that but for hands and our own objects (and for head whilst you're at it !).

We would pose a character and stick something in their hand, or attach a handbag so they could walk with it. All the technology already seems to be there.

Yes you could put the handbag upside down so it looks wrong. Yes some animations would look wrong because the gravity was incorrect, but that's down to us to make sure it all works and we avoid such things. There are so many things you can do already to break the rules of the universe - you just have to make sure you don't.

I know it's not the perfect solution, but I think it'd be 80% there and we could do so much with it.

Please can we have that. Please......
permalink
pages: 1 2 | the topic is closed

Home ? Feedback ? Moving limbs

About

Media

Legal

Muvizu

Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.