Struggling with good "drag"

[stealingfeathers]

Hello Everyone,

I'm struggling to create a good looking "drag" effect on my objects (not motion blur).

Example: A character's arm gets stretched to reach out for something but the body stays in place. Then, everything catches up and it all snaps into place at the destination point.

I'm not happy with the tests I did, and didn't bother to save a file to show here. I've been trying to do this with translate layer and translate point, but maybe I should be using bones? Maybe it's a combination of tools? I'm hoping a simple demo or two will get me going down the right path.

Thanks!

[slowtiger]

With a rigged character I'd just translate the arm bones for one or two frames.

[stealingfeathers]

With a rigged character I'd just translate the arm bones for one or two frames.

Yeah, I get your point there. I'll try it with a bone. Thanks

[slowtiger]

Workflow tip: I don't want to lose the original bone position. So I first create a key where the drag should start and another where it's back to normal, and only then drag the bone(s) to other positions in the frames between.

[Greenlaw]

Do you mean something like this?



I'm just using target bones for the hands and feet, with Maximum Stretch in the arms and leg bones set to 4. This is keyframed of course but this setup makes it easy to animate 'drag' in a character. I'm essentially just animating 4 target bones and the character's root bone (hips) to get a 'drag' effect. It's very cartoon-ish but I'm guessing that's what you have in mind?

This example is a pretty simple one but I can send you the file if you like.

If you need to get more specific with the distortions, consider using Pin bones, and segmenting your vectors or Smart Warp mesh fine enough to get nice deformations. This will make it behave similar to Puppet in After Effects but with the benefit of a full character rig.

You might even consider using Bounce or Elastic interpolation for some bones as an additional follow through effect. Or just hand animate the secondary stuff like I did with the head--it's only two keyframes with an Ease In key at the end. No need to automate or use physics for this kind of stuff.

Have fun!