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- [Instructor] The time has finally come
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to animate our squirrel character.
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The first thing to do
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is to play the Squirrel_Rig_UI.pi script.
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It will enable our rig layer
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and we will be able to
hide bone groups easily.
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You can duplicate our keying set action
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and create a new action
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that we call 01 Run cycle.
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And then double check our preferences
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by going into the Edit
menu in the top bar,
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Preferences, Animation
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and check that the Only
Insert Available is on.
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It will override our usual
automatic keying set,
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making sure that we don't have any key
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that will be written
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if there is not an existing keyframe.
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If I move this knee
joint tweaker controller,
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you can see that the auto keying is on
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but Blender is only recording
and writing location keyframe
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for this controller.
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This way, our action editor
is clean in the keying
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but on top of this,
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we can still use a specific keying set.
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And I will enable the
whole character keying set.
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This way, when I press the I key
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to insert a keyframe,
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Blender will key all the controllers
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of my character and this is done
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on top of the only
available option we have set
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in the preferences.
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When we were blocking the
bouncing ball animation,
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I advised you to key all the controllers.
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And here is the reason why.
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I will rapidly block out a turn
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with a change of foot position.
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Our little friend is rotating his body
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to look to the right
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and he's also moving his feet accordingly.
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During most of the animation,
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his right front foot stays on the ground
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and it switches position
only on the very last frame.
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Here I've done the blocking
of those three poses,
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only keying the controller I'm using.
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It looks great in step mode
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but as soon as I will switch to spline,
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the right front foot
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will be interpolating
from the very first frame
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to the last.
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And it doesn't look good at all.
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And I will have to move the keyframe,
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insert new keyframe, et cetera.
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While if I insert a keyframe
on the whole character
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on each main poses,
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I will get a better behavior
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and the right front foot will only move
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from frame 20 to frame 30.
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So you may think this is not a big deal
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but believe me, if you
have this kind of problem
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on the whole character on every leg,
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this is going to be a pain.
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And if you have the same issue
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with all the controller,
the head, the hips,
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that's gonna be a nightmare.
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So key all your controllers
during the blocking stage.
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The second step is to study references.
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You will find a link to this one
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in the documentation.
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It's very important to watch
as much reference as possible
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and honestly, nowadays,
it's not that complicated
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with YouTube to find good
references of animals.
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I guess you already know
what I'm going to show here
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is that the body of the squirrel
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is like the bouncing ball.
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Squashed when it's on the ground
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and as soon as it's going in the air,
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it is stretching.
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Basically, the chest of the creature
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is arriving first
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and then the hips are catching up.
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So when preparing an animation,
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you have to make this work
of seeing the character
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as a whole piece.
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Look at the curve
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that make the body, for example.
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Once you have the broad detail,
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you have to go for the smaller detail.
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Look how the front feet
arrive at the separated time.
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It's just one or two frame of difference
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but it will make your animation way better
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than if both end arrive at the same time.
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In animation, when we
get something symmetrical
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or something occurring at the same time,
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we call this twinning.
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And this is something
you should always avoid
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unless it is done on purpose.
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If you do the Hulk smashing the ground
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with both his hands,
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you want both to hit the
ground at the same time.
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It will communicate impact and strength.
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But in the case of our squirrel,
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look at how breaking the
symmetry looks way more natural.
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On the left, the character looks stiff,
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on the right, it looks way better.
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So don't forget to avoid twinning
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both in timing and in shape
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and let's get started.
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I don't know how many
frame I will need to block
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or how long will be the jump
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but I will start by aligning the feet
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with the ground.
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One cool feature
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is that once I've positioned one
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of the foot, I can select it
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and press Control + C
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to copy its pose and you
will get a copied pose
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to buffer message in
the footer of Blender.
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If I now press Control + Shift + V,
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I will paste the mirrored
pose automatically
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on the other foot.
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This is a shortcut I'm going to use a lot.
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From there, I will start
posing the pushing pose
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when our character is preparing to jump.
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So I have my reference
image on a second screen.
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So I invite you to have it always open
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and try to find the frame
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where the squirrel is preparing to jump.
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His body should be very squashed
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and the root of the
torso almost horizontal
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with the ground.
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Starting with the back legs,
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I'm slightly rotating the foot
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toward the outside of the body.
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This way, I'm breaking the symmetry both
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from the side view and the front view.
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Then I will move its front feet right
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in between the back feet.
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I'm also breaking the symmetry,
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having one of the front
leg slightly more forward
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than the other, one slightly
more raised than the other.
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Then we need to squash the whole body
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by rotating the chest controller
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and the hips controller.
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You can also slightly move them
toward the center of gravity
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of the character.
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Just think of your character as a box
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and this box has to
contain the heaviest part
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of the character, the chest and the hips.
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The head and the tail
counterbalance each other
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and if we draw a straight
line in the middle
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of this pose, we can see
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that our feet are more or less
framing this contact point
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between the vertical line and the ground,
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offering a balanced pose to our character.
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When blocking a character,
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you should always start
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with the most extreme position.
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So I will now block the airborne position.
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I start by moving the root controller
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by half of the length of the jump.
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In this case, I move it
by 30 centimeter forward
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and then I will use the torso controller
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to raise the character.
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In most cases, you will use
the root controller only
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to move your character
on the y and x-axis.
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When I do a run or walk cycle,
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I generally deal with it
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without moving the root bone
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as if the character was on a treadmill.
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But it's a bit harder to
read the shape of the jump.
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So during the blocking stage,
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we will use what we call a root motion.
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And when the animation will be finished,
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we will get rid of this root motion
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so that our character
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will be jumping without moving forward.
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This way it's gonna be
way easier to use it
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as a run cycle
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and we will just have
to move the root bone
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wherever we want in our scene.
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Don't worry if you don't get it right now,
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we will do it together later on.
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Back to our air pose.
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You can see that I've
slightly stretched the body.
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So I've canceled the rotation on the hips
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and the chest and then I'm
resetting them by hand.
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So this is something I advise you to do
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when you don't have a
major change in the pose.
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You select the hips and
the chest controller
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and press Alt + R and Alt + G
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to get rid of any rotation
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that was recorded on the previous pose.
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And then you create the new pose yourself.
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Blocking a new pose from a neutral one
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will push you to correctly
look at your reference
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and force you to work on
the shape of the new one.
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The back legs are pointing
toward their starting point
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while the front leg are pushing forward
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to pull the whole body in the air.
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Both the front and back feet
are currently pointing inward.
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It preserve balance
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and aerodynamism to the character.
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You can use the pull target
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and the rotation controller
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to fix the elbow and the
knees of your character.
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Don't forget to scrub between your first
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and second pose
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to kind of feel the motion, the movement.
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Then to improve the pose,
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I will stretch my character even more
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and realign a bit the hips and the tail.
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During the blocking stage,
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00:09:12,001 --> 00:09:15,800
figuring the overlapping
motion of the tail
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is pretty hard.
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That's why I'm just working
with the very first controller
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00:09:21,270 --> 00:09:22,280
of the tail.
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00:09:22,280 --> 00:09:24,930
We can work on the
follow-through of the tail
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while detailing the blocking
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00:09:26,730 --> 00:09:30,480
or even during the
polishing of the animation.
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To finish the blocking
of those extreme pose,
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I will have to guess the landing position.
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On the air extreme pose,
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I will set the root bone position to -0.3
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and I will duplicate all the keys
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00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:46,550
on frame zero and move them on frame 10.
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00:09:46,550 --> 00:09:50,330
Since the airborne root
position on the y-axis
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00:09:50,330 --> 00:09:55,330
was -0.3, I will set the landing at -0.6,
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two time further.
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00:09:57,040 --> 00:09:58,930
Now I scrub through the keyframe
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to feel the motion
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00:10:00,460 --> 00:10:02,770
and I feel should be a little further.
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00:10:02,770 --> 00:10:05,500
So I just need to select the root bone
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00:10:05,500 --> 00:10:06,760
and on frame five,
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00:10:06,760 --> 00:10:09,980
I will try a -0.4
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00:10:09,980 --> 00:10:11,290
and now I feel like I need
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00:10:11,290 --> 00:10:12,840
to tweak a bit this pose
237
00:10:12,840 --> 00:10:16,230
to make the character a
little more horizontal.
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00:10:16,230 --> 00:10:18,230
So this is something important.
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00:10:18,230 --> 00:10:21,610
Don't hesitate to revise your blocking.
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00:10:21,610 --> 00:10:24,591
The blocking stage is
the most important stage.
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00:10:24,591 --> 00:10:26,970
And if you don't do it properly,
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if you don't spend the time now,
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you will suffer even more
during the polishing stage.
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00:10:32,950 --> 00:10:34,920
I can now push my root bone
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00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:38,960
to the position -0.8 on the landing frame
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00:10:38,960 --> 00:10:41,100
and now it feels like the squirrel
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is jumping too far away for me.
248
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So I will try to find an in
between with -0.35 and -0.7.
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Compared to the reference,
250
00:10:51,300 --> 00:10:55,330
our squirrel is making pretty
large jump to move forward
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00:10:55,330 --> 00:10:57,650
but animation is not necessarily
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about copying the reality.
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00:10:59,880 --> 00:11:01,520
It's exaggeration.
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00:11:01,520 --> 00:11:04,260
And this will lead us to a peel.
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It's a but like making
a caricature of motion.
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When you do a caricature,
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you try to find the cool feature
258
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of the face and exaggerate them.
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We are doing the same here with motion.
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In the next video,
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we will start adding breakdowns
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00:11:20,930 --> 00:11:24,767
to detail the blocking
animation of our character.
19764
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