Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

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Víctor Paredes
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Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

Post by Víctor Paredes »

I needed to animate some cycles, but changing the intensity of them during the animation. I realized there's not an easy official way to do that, so started experimenting with some ideas.

Here, the horizontal bone is parent of the Pin bone and the Pin bone is the target of the vertical bone.
So, I created a cycle for the Pin bone to go left/right/left.
Now, since the Pin bone is child of the horizontal bone, if I scale the horizontal bone, the space the pin bone travels is also being scaled, so by scaling the bone, I could dilate and contract the movement of the pin bone.
Then I added an extra Smart bone to control the scale. It's not necessary to add it, but it allows to animate more easily:
Image

Then I was thinking how this technique could have real world use, so I tried with some dynamic bones and, more important, I added an extra vertical bone to control the height of the cycle.
So now the cycle could be in two dimensions, with the horizontal bone scaling X and the vertical bone scaling Y.

Image

By having the option to scale both axis, now we can add any animation cycle easly scaled.
I'm thinking this could be specially useful to have crowds with slighly different walkcycles, for instance.

Image

And by adding an extra Smart bone containing the base walk cycle, you could animate the intensity of the movement, but also the speed of the walk.

Image

I hope all this makes sense!
You can download the Moho files here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3bddil1u4kvj7 ... .zip?raw=1
Image Image Image Image
Moho Product Manager

www.mohoanimation.com
Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
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synthsin75
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Re: Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

Post by synthsin75 »

Wow, that's an amazing rig, especially having infinite variety from animating one walk cycle.

Bookmarked!
Daxel
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Re: Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

Post by Daxel »

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

Post by Greenlaw »

Ha ha! This technique is super cool Victor! Thanks for sharing.
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Víctor Paredes
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Re: Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Thanks, guys. I'm happy you like it.
I just added some Moho files in the first post. They are all quick not to tidy tests, but they could help to better understand what is going on.
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Moho Product Manager

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Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
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SuperSGL
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Re: Scaling the intensity of a cycle - Technique

Post by SuperSGL »

Impressive outside the box thinking, I like it! Can already see some humorous situations for these. Thank you so much!
"Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn."
Norman McLaren


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