Original subtitles

- [Instructor] For this new segment of the animation

instead of polishing the body controller first,

I re-timed the feet steps.

The idea is to avoid the twinning as explained before

and having all the feet contacting with the ground

at the same time.

You can see here that each feet is contacting the ground

with an offset of one frame.

The goal here is not to polish the feet step

but just to refine the timing.

So I'm using the action in the tone or the graffiti tone

because it's easier to read.

I can easily find whenever the foot controller

is changing position and change the timing

by offsetting those key frames.

As usual, I haven't found the right timing.

We've made first trail

so I'm just playing the animation lot

moving the key frame until I feel like I have a good rhythm.

As soon as I was happy with this base rhythm

I started working on the body controller

as I have done in the previous videos.

As usual I'm trying to get a nice arc working first

with the location curve.

Since our character is moving on the side,

the X location and Z location curve

are the most influential.

To make the character a bit more lively,

I will input the slight overshoot on frame 82.

Since the motion is driven by the fear

and awareness of our character,

the head is leading the animation

because he has heard something.

So as we have seen before

it's even the heels of that are leading the animation.

This is why I take a particular care to have

a nice head rotation and the head pointing

toward the next point.

So as usual, I'm tracking the nose of the character.

So it might not be the best move

to start polishing the head before the chest.

But in this case, the chest motion is not that important

meaning that there is not that much influence.

And most of the emotion comes from

the main body controller I have already polished

and the head rotation controller.

And as usual once I'm happy with the head rotation

and I'm polishing the chest

I can get back onto the head rotation

to fix any bumps on the arcs of the head.

And here we can see all the nose motion path

draw a nice arc.

And as I move on polishing the chest

I'm calculating the motion path of the head.

In the previous video, I was using the neck controller.

You can use weather the head or the neck.

That's not the problem.

And since I've already polished the main body controller

you can see that the arc

of the root of the head is pretty clean already.

So I'm just very slightly refining the rotation,

the twisting of the chest to make it drag a bit.

There is a second step in this head turn animation

where our character is looking backward even more

because he has probably heard another noise.

So to input a bit of this fear

I pushed down the Z location curve

to create a micro anticipation toward the next turn.

So as usual for the second step,

I'm working first on the chest controller

or working on the location curves

and then the bit on the rotation curve

and then I will go ahead

with the chest and head rotation.

As I've made this micro anticipation

to emphasize this new movement

and as it is very fast,

I'm creating a slight bump on frame 93

to create a nice overshoot.

Those little bounces on the curve

tend to bring a bit of texture

into the animation and make our character less robotic.

Later on, I've worked on the head location curve

to slightly extend the neck of the character.

So I (mumbles) the head up.

It's really changed the silhouette of the character

and we can better even read the tension,

the fear, the alert of the character.

I've also added a slight bump

on the Z curve on frame 93,

creating a subtle head bounce.

Working on the feet was very close

to what we have already seen before.

Since those are very short steps,

X and Y location curve are almost linear

or there is a very short easing

in the beginning of the motion,

making the foot accelerating toward the next position.

While making the next step

make sure that you don't trace the foot that much

because every motion uses energy and we are all lazy.

So it's the same for this character.

We need to make those steps very subtle

and then we can make the foot drag through rotation.

So it's exactly as in the previous videos

we raise the foot as less as possible.

We set the end-all to vector whenever

the foot is taking off

and contacting with the ground,

because in those case the foot should be accelerating

before contacting the ground.

We then use the rotation of the foot to create

a nice dragging motion.

And as the foot is contacting the ground

I keep it rotated on frame 80 for example

and then it gets flat one frame later on frame 81

so that we get this nice slapping of the foot on the ground.

As I was happy with the back leg motion,

I then focus on the pole controllers

that will allow us to change the orientation of the knee

and the ankle of the back feet.

The idea here is just to input a bit of delay

in the knee motion so that we have a bit of dragging.

The knees pointing toward the next point.

And then it settles just after the contacting frame

so that we will have a little shaking in the legs

that will look more natural.

I did the same with the left back leg

but with away most subtle motion

since the foot doesn't move that much.

I haven't polished those pole target controller

that much on this animation

and the gain it's a matter of time.

If you want to spend time

to add those subtle detail to your animation,

it will sure look better.

As any craft the more time you will input

into your animation the better it should look.

For the front leg, it's the same story as usual

try to make good ox, avoid twinning.

So we have offset the footstep

in the beginning of the video in putting one frame

between the contact in the pose

of the right front leg and the left front leg.

And then I use rotation to input some dragging

into the motion of the feet.

Then I've tried reworking the main body controller

and the chest rotation

to avoid the front right leg to be over extended.

It makes the character looking unbalanced

which I don't like,

but after a few trial, I've decided to add a new step

to the front right leg.

So that's perfectly fine to add new poses to your cat

while you are polishing.

I've created these new foot pose on frame 95

and I've duplicated the curve until frame 99.

Then I'm scrubbing through the animation

to check the timing and spacing of this new step.

And from there I will polish it

as we usually do working first on the location curve

and then on the rotation curve.

Those little additional footstep are very relevant

for this kind of small mammals.

It communicate the thrust and tension of our character

hearing some noise,

but also their fast paced metabolism.

If you watch mouse or cat references

you will see that they moved their feet all the time.

I've policed the heaps last

and I've slightly changed the pose of the heaps

by raising the back of the character.

I felt like when I raised a bit of my character

help you looks more aware and more ready to flee

if any danger is coming

then the second polish stage

is mostly working on those rotation curve.

Make sure that I have smooth rotation

and make sure that the silhouette of my character

and the shape of your spine looks natural.

As usual, the final stage is to work on the tail rotation.

So I always start working with the root of the tail,

working with its rotation axis

and then I go along onto the chain.

As usual, you can study the full time lapse

of this polishing stage in the next video.

I will see you in the video afterwards,

that is going to be the very last video

of this idle animation.