Shares tips that will help you create high-quality animation faster and more efficiently.

Anyone can be taught use 3D application to create animations and manipulate curves, IK or blendshapes. But that doesn't make him an animator yet, because real animation has many components.

Tip #1: Block Key Poses

Focus on important character movements, keeping the "big picture" in mind

Don't try to instantly, when it comes to animation, work out every movement of the character. If you constantly focus on any one moment, you will not see the whole picture, creating an unnatural looking animation.

In animation, each movement must be harmonious, so it is very important to see the whole picture, focusing on key poses.

Tip #2: Copy-paste keys

In some cases, such as when working on walk or run cycles, it does not make sense to work on mirror poses separately. Therefore, you can cheat and, for example, simply copy-paste the keys from your left foot to your right. At the same time, remember that in the first place you are doing this to speed up the process of work itself.

Tip #3: Use a reliable rig

Good 3D animation depends not only on the talent of the animator, but also on the quality of the rigg they use. A quick basic rig will allow you to create a basic animation. Therefore, the rig needs to be customized for your specific highly specialized needs. Unprofessional rigging will only cause you unnecessary problems. Also, the animator should not be able to edit the constraints and other systems, as this will simply “kill” the rig.

The best rig is the one that allows the animator to animate without thinking about unnecessary things for him. It's so cool when you just take a character and move it in the scene, keying, without thinking about any technical things, when you don't have to write to the rigger every 5 minutes, asking why this character's hand was blown to the floor of the screen.

Tip #4: Make your PTTs work

Animation is not only keys. Only with their help it is quite difficult to control the animation. Also, if you set the keys in each frame, the scene will become overloaded, the animation will be very difficult to edit, and the character's movements will be unnatural.

Before you freak out about the fact that you get unnatural animation, experiment with animation curves and tangents. Each key has a PTT that can be adjusted and can also be used to control intermediate frames.

Tip #5: Let the app do the work for you

Even if you are working in the most expensive 3D application latest version, you are still animating in the traditional way. Moving joints and assigning keys is a lot of work, so let the program do the work for you.

This is especially true for secondary animation, as dynamics can be used to render a character's hair, clothing, or tail. This will be calculated automatically, allowing you to focus on the key animation.

Tip #6: Use a proxy model to lighten the viewport

When working on key moves, it is better to use a low-poly proxy model instead of a high-poly one.

A high-field model can hang the viewport because it needs to deform and move in the scene with the help of a skeleton or other complex deformers. This becomes especially noticeable if you play the animation in real time.

When working on key poses and basic movements, hide the high-poly model and animate a lightweight proxy. It can be either a simplified version of the character, or a pair of cubes with the right proportions. This approach will allow you to carefully work out the basic movements, which you will then apply to the high-pole model.

Tip #7: The 3 Keys to Good Animation: Preparation, Action, and Reaction

Plan your animation around the 3 phases: preparation, action, and reaction

When working on sequences or animations in general, don't forget the 3 important phases: expectation, action and reaction. Almost every movement contains some fraction of each of these phases.

For example, before you jump, you bend your knees, or take your arm back before you throw something. This is the preparation phase. Jumping or throwing is an action. Reaction - bending the knees or moving the arms after landing. The same approach applies to facial animation. To achieve the effect of comicality, you can exaggerate all movements or facial expressions.

Tip #8: See things through the character's eyes

Don't be afraid to record yourself on camera

The best reference for an animator is video. The ability to constantly view it, pause it, play it in slow motion will allow you to work out the character's movements in great detail.

And this is not new. Serious animation studios always film the voice actors as they read the text. This video is then passed to an animator who will animate the characters based on the actor's behavior and facial expressions.

This approach is not available to all of us, because we do not have the limitless possibilities of a film studio. However, we can get up from our chair and at least record a video of how we walk or behave. Try to reproduce the scene you are working on yourself, no matter how heavy or difficult it seems to you. This will help you deal with blocking faster and create better animations.

Tip #9: Use a Mirror

Your best reference is yourself

Once you've finished animating your character's body, move on to his face. It's best to animate the face at the end. This is a very important part of animation. At this stage, you need to create natural facial expressions that will convince the viewer that the character is really experiencing certain emotions.

Buy yourself a small mirror and look at yourself while you work, make yourself a couple of faces in it. To create high-quality animation, you need good references, and what reference can be better than yourself?

Tip #10: Reuse Animation

Library with animations will help you work faster and more efficiently

This advice applies to all areas of the CG industry. It can also be used in animation.

It will take more than one or even two hours of work to create a quality walk or run cycle, so once you create it, use it in subsequent projects. Focus on the key poses, then work on them in more detail, make them more varied, and thus make the character unique.

And finally. Remember that the face should be animated last.

I mentioned earlier how important it is to work on the character as a whole, blocking out key poses and then refining them. But this applies only to the animation of the body of the characters, since facial expressions should be dealt with at the very least.

In this tutorial, we want to talk about the main steps for creating animated characters using Flash programs on the example of developing a character for the game "Learn by playing" and an avatar for a Web site.

Computer game character

According to the scenario of the game "Learning by playing", all actions in it are performed by the main character - Kolobok (Fig. 1), who moves across the field (Fig. 2) in search of a diamond.

The meaning of this game is that the player must choose the path to the goal (diamond), naming the objects located to the right, left, above and below the cell where Kolobok stands, thus moving the character up and down, to the right -to the left. For example, in order for the Gingerbread Man to move one cell down, in the menu in Fig. 2 you need to select the word "orange". Choosing the right names in the menu, the player can lead the character to the coveted diamond.

The same principle formed the basis of several themed games. So, in fig. 3 shows a variant of the game dedicated to the study of fractions 1 .

1 The program contains 12 topics for study (“Shape. Color. Number”, “Seasons”, “Hours”, “Birds”, “Animals”, “Mental Counting”, “Geometric Figures”, “Roman Numerals”, “Fractions ”, “Palette of the artist”, “English”, “Notation”).

Alexander Prokhorov, Mikhail Morozov, Dmitry Bystrov, Elena Andrianova, Andrey Vyaznikov took part in the creation of the game. More detailed information about the game can be found at: http://computergames.com.ru/54/7217.html .

As follows from the scenario described above, one of the tasks in the development of the game was the creation of the Kolobok character and the animation of his movements.

As an example, the animation of Kolobok moving from top to bottom is shown: animation 1 .

At the first stage, sketches of the appearance of the hero are created (Fig. 4), as well as sketches of his movements and main actions (Fig. 5).

In parallel, sketches are made that show how the character will look in different themes of the game. In particular, in fig. 6. shows a sketch for the topic "Astronomy", and in fig. 7 - sketch for the theme "Fractions".

In this case appearance Kolobok is determined not only by aesthetic, but also by technical considerations - how to create a character so that it can be easily animated.

On fig. 8 shows that the character consists of separate elements.

2 this work performed by Elena Adrianova.

This allows you to set the movement of each element (arms, legs, eyebrows, eyes, etc.) separately. Thus, instead of repeatedly redrawing the character in different positions, it is enough to set the automatic animation of the elements of which it consists.

Let's take a closer look at what our hero is made of. The Parts folder shown in fig. 9 contains 12 elements (mostly movie clips) that make up the Gingerbread Man. For example, the left leg is Symbol 4d (Fig. 9), the right hand is Symbol 7d (Fig. 10), etc.

At the same time, individual elements, such as Symbol 12d (Fig. 11), already contain animation - the movements of the eyebrows and eyes - and also consist of individual elements.

In particular, the Symbol 12d movie clip consists of separate components: eyebrows (Symbol 34) (Fig. 12), left eye (Fig. 13). In turn, the movie clip depicting the left eye is based on the "eye" movie clip (Fig. 14).

Thus, the hero, as it were, is assembled from separate parts of the designer.

In order to show how the individual elements that make up the Gingerbread Man move during walking, let's turn to the figure, which shows the walking cycle in the Onion Skinning mode (tracing paper). From fig. 15 shows that while walking, not only his arms and legs move, but almost all the elements of which he consists. At the same time, all elements are animated in the automatic motion animation mode (Motion Tweening) and only the arms (or rather, the lines that connect the hands with the body) are animated in the automatic Shape Tweening animation mode (in Fig. 8 this animation is set in Layer 5 and Layer 7).

On fig. 16 shows how the animation is created when the character moves to the left. This uses many of the common elements used when animating a character moving down.

Kolobok's movements are animated similarly when moving to the right and up.

In order to diversify the character's movements, various periodically repeating gestures are added. For example, Kolobok puts his hand to his forehead while walking or, looking at the viewer, shakes his finger (Fig. 17).

The main variants of Kolobok's movement can be seen in this video.

Some of the character's gestures appear in response to the player's actions. For example, when the player thinks for a long time, the bun starts to yawn. If the answer is incorrect, the character grimaces, and so on.

In order to better understand how this character is animated, you can refer to the source fla file.

Site Avatar

Often, a character interacts with the visitor to bring a Web site to life. The simplest example is testing on a website, in which, in addition to (or instead of) verbal comments, the result of the answer is evaluated by displaying the mood of the avatar.

Consider an example of creating such a character.

At the initial stage, those moods of the hero were chosen that should be involved according to the scenario, and the artist made the corresponding sketches (Fig. 18).

Next, the images were brought to a final look in Photoshop. At the same time, a template with constant contours of the face was created, into which the features necessary to convey this mood fit. The color of the face also changed (Fig. 19).

After that, the following interactive movie was made in flash. In this video, we reflected only six frames, that is, we used only part of the images shown in Fig. 18. But in order to understand the principle, this is quite enough. Let's take a closer look at how to create such a video.

In the first frame we place the image of the face "sad" on command File => Import=> Import to stage, and then we translate it into a vector form by command Modify=> Bitmap=> Trace Bitmap.

Then, in relation to the first frame, we write a line of code stop();- fig. twenty.

Given code specifies that the program should not move to the next frame until the user performs some control action.

So, the top button will contain the code shown in fig. 21.

The second and subsequent frames are created using the Insert Keyframe command. This command creates on each input frame all the elements from the previous frame, so all we have to do is replace the picture with the next facial expression.

For a more detailed acquaintance with this video, you can refer to the original

Creating a three-dimensional character for a logo or commercial is only half the battle. As soon as the appearance of your character is ready, agreed and approved, the fun begins - the creation of 3d animation. This is a time-consuming and incredibly interesting process, which ultimately allows you to "revive" any idea.. For example, to teach a character to talk to a client, be sad and happy, think and move, jump into adventures and show on your fingers how to apply your product.

The work of 3d animators is a colossal work that allows you to create not just a moving picture, but also a completely reliable reality around. How is it created 3D animation and what miracles can be done skillfully, we will analyze in more detail in the article.

To quote Dr. Frankenstein: it's alive!

Animation of three-dimensional objects differs significantly from 2d animation - "flat" cartoons, where the volume was achieved with the help of perspective and the correct painting of characters and the environment. Today, technology allows you to immediately show its shape with lighting and camera movement. In this case, the concept of animation changes:

2d animation- creating the illusion of movement or changing the shape of objects using techniques.

animation 3d— automatic movement or transformation of objects in space and time.

Simply put, before it was necessary to draw the movement of each character frame by frame. Now it is enough to create a three-dimensional model of the character, after which it can be moved in space without additional efforts and drawings. But it’s easy to say, but in reality, animating a 3d model of characters is a rather complicated process. To make the figurine move, it is not enough to have access to a computer and smart programs. You also need to imagine how the hero can move, what forces affect him (not those that are higher, but, for example, gravity, the force of friction and resistance).

If you want to get with character, it is important to turn to animators who are aware of all the subtleties and are ready to fanatically work out every detail. Not only gait, but also facial expressions, and the movement of hairs, and the sliding of fabric (if the hero, of course, wears clothes).

To take into account everything at once, you need to be a little magician and a little genius - quite a good description for the animators of the KLONA studio.

How to create non-zombies: features of 3d character animation

As modern wisdom says: nothing is a zombie but a zombie. And if your hero is not him, then the animation of the character should be “live”, or, as they say now, verbal. The viewer must believe that the hero is really walking, looking, grimacing or smiling. interacts with the environment.

The creation and animation of a 3d character is the creation of a story that is told not by words on paper (or screen), but by movement. For example, a character's facial expressions can say a lot about a character. But for this, he must have a sufficiently “quality” face to make the muscles move.

When the question is approached without due diligence or at half strength, as a rule, something is obtained at least unnatural, and sometimes even frightening.

Therefore, let's take as a starting point, and see what can be done with it:

1. Animate by keyframes;
2. Animate along a path;
3. Create animation in a dynamic environment;
4. Animate using motion capture.

Each of the ways is easiest to explain, considering not only the technology, but also examples.

Keyframe animation: from point A to point B

- one of the most common ways to create 3D character animation. The essence of the method is this: on the time scale, several main points are set at which the position or shape of the object changes. The animator sets the required parameters of the model in the specified frames, and the program calculates the "intermediate" states automatically.

Example: For simplicity, let's take a rubber ball that hits the ground and bounces up. To display one such "jump", the process must be broken down into three stages: the ball at the top - the ball on the ground - the ball again at the top. In a good way, you should set more key frames, take into account a bunch of little things. Like the fact that when falling, the rubber case is stretched, and when it is hit, it is flattened.

If you correctly deform the object at each fixed point in time, the 3d animation will turn out to be as natural as possible.

Not always 3d models of characters are people or animals. Our hero can be any object, for example, a flying camera or a UFO (in general, everything that is enough for fantasy). In this case, flashing lights and rotating along the axis will not be enough - not interesting. But to make the object fly along the trajectory, and even “send” the camera to monitor the movement, approaching and moving away in time ...

And skillful handling of focus (that's exactly what a 3d animation studio should be able to do) will turn a simple circling of an object in space into an almost fascinating blockbuster.

The essence of the method is to:

• set the starting point (beginning of the object's path);
• designate the trajectory (the path that the object makes);
• specify the end point (where the model should stop).

After the character/object is “attached” to the trajectory, the program itself calculates and creates the movement. If you add the animation of the object itself (flapping wings, opening airlocks, retracting the landing gear) and “playing” with the camera, you can achieve very interesting effects.

The CLONE studio team knows exactly how to make a simple movement along a laid route and breathtakingly dynamic.

Our hero is not in a vacuum. Any character is surrounded by some kind of reality, in which there is necessarily gravity (if it is not in space), the movement of air masses and other types of vibrations. All this should be taken into account so that the character animation is realistic enough.

What does the result of such an animation look like and where can it be observed?

In details. When a character walks through the city, and the cloak flutters in the gusts of wind, or when the hair sticks to the face under water - all this is achieved thanks to animation taking into account environmental factors.

Strictly speaking, animation in dynamic environment- rather computational work with deep immersion in the physical characteristics of objects. But without all this, even the most detailed 3d modeling will not make the character come alive.

Motion capture: turning a movie into a cartoon

Motion capture technology- young, but very popular. Today, motion capture is used in almost all science fiction films. The essence of this method is extremely simple:

• sensors are attached to the actor;
• while the actor is moving, the cameras record the positions of the sensors;
• their displacement is processed by the program and creates a moving "skeleton" with a set of key frames;
• the resulting information package is “wrapped” with a shell - for this, 3d character modeling is used.

As a result, the actions of the hero turn out to be realistic, convincing, and the animators do not have to deal with physics and remember where something bends.

21
mar
2008

Genre: Animated characters
Developer: Oska Software
Medication: Not required
Platform: Win XP/VISTA
System requirements: Funny animated characters, mostly cute girls, that will live on your desktop. At short intervals, they will perform various funny actions, but you can also call any action by clicking on the character with the mouse cursor.
(cartoons - the characters are pleasantly entertaining and entertaining while the computer is doing some kind of operation. When you work, they don’t interfere.)
Description: I searched for a long time, downloaded it for a long time, found it and post it Thanks to the site http://www.nautilus-position.narod.ru/ (http://nautilus.fastbb.ru)
First you need to install DeskMates (basic) + FatB, then everything else if you wish. Argive 2D and 3D Animation, as well as live characters
Add. Information: First you need to install DeskMates (basic) + FatB

27
Apr
2009

Release year: 2009
Genre: Postcards
Developer: DIY
Number of pictures: 1915
Image resolution: 100px × 100px; 500px × 600px; 400px × 297px etc.
Picture format:
Description: Postcards for all occasions. From jokes to wishes for a good night's sleep. There are also postcards for the holidays - April 1, March 8, Cosmonautics Day, Happy New Year and much more
Add. information:

14
sep
2012

Animated postcards

Release year: 2012
Genre: Postcards
Number of files: 2477
Resolution: 200x286 to 6056x4592
Format: GIF, JPG
Description: A huge number of postcards (static and animated) for a variety of holidays. There are postcards in different languages. ,

29
aug
2010

Animated avatars!

Year of release: 2008-2010
Genre: Avatars
Number of files: 6220
Resolution: From 22x22 to 150x150
Format: .gif
Description: A bunch of various animated avatars on different topics. (Fantasy, cartoons, anime, jokes, symbols, road signs, emoticons, from movies, flowers, etc.) The number of avatars is constantly increasing, but the examples remain old! If anyone sees a repetition, please write the name of the file. And I apologize for the fact that the folder "Cartoons and anime 100x100" is in the archive. Otherwise, it is impossible to fill in the torrent. --------

03
dec
2010

DreamScene Animated Wallpaper

Release year: 2009

Number of files: 58

Format: wmv, mpg
Platform: Windows Vista, 7 58 high quality animated wallpapers! They fit perfectly and simply fascinate with their beauty and splendor!
Installation: 1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the folder C:\Windows\Web\Windows\DreamScene, there will already be one dream, to launch it, right-click, select Set as Desktop Bacrground. 6. N...

06
dec
2010

Animated wallpaper DreamScene "Space"

Release year: 2010
Genre: Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Number of files: 22
Resolution: 1280x720, 1920x1080
Format: exe, wmv
Platform: Windows Vista, 7 A collection of great space footages (screensavers).
Installation: 1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the folder C:\Windows\Web\Windows\DreamScene, there will already be one dream, to launch it, right-click, select Set as Desktop Bacrground. 6. New dreams for installation, just throw ...

07
dec
2010

DreamScene Animated Wallpaper "Miscellaneous"

Release year: 2010
Genre: Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Number of files: 11
Resolution: 1280x720, 1920x1080
Format: exe, wmv, mpg

Installation: 1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the folder C:\Windows\Web\Windows\DreamScene, there will already be one dream, to launch it, right-click, select Set as Desktop Bacrground. 6. New dreams for installation just throw in the same ...

08
dec
2010

Animated wallpaper DreamScene "Sexy"

Release year: 2010
Genre: Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Number of files: 27
Resolution: 1280x720
Format: exe, wmv
Platform: Windows Vista, 7 A collection of great footage (screensavers).
Installation: 1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the folder C:\Windows\Web\Windows\DreamScene, there will already be one dream, to launch it, right-click, select Set as Desktop Bacrground. 6. To install new dreams, just drop them into the same Windows Dre folder ...

09
Jan
2010

Release year: 2010
Genre: animated wallpaper
Number of files: 140
Developer: DreamScene
Developer website: www.vistadreams.org/
Interface language: Russian
Platform: vista,7
System requirements:
Processor: Pentium IV
Memory: 512 RAM
Video card: 256 MB Free space on
HD: 2.83 GB
Resolution: 1280x720
Format: wmv drug: present
Description: girls space nature waterfalls sea 3D installation1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the C:WindowsWebWindows DreamScene folder, there will already be one ...

07
dec
2010

Animated wallpaper DreamScene "Nature"

Release year: 2010
Genre: Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Number of files: 45
Resolution: 1280x720, 1920x1080
Format: exe, wmv
Platform: Windows Vista, 7 A collection of great footage (screensavers).
Installation: 1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the folder C:\Windows\Web\Windows\DreamScene, there will already be one dream, to launch it, right-click, select Set as Desktop Bacrground. 6. New dreams for installation just throw in the same folder ...

13
dec
2010

DreamScene Animated Wallpaper "Miscellaneous" №7

Release year: 2010
Genre: Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Number of files: 30
Resolution: 720x480 to 1920x1200
Format: exe, wmv
Platform: Windows Vista, 7 A collection of great footage (screensavers).

13
dec
2010

DreamScene Animated Wallpaper "Miscellaneous" #6

Release year: 2010
Genre: Animated Desktop Wallpaper
Number of files: 31
Resolution: 720x480 to 1920x1080
Format: exe, wmv
Platform: Windows Vista, 7 A collection of great footage (screensavers).
Installation: 1. Run DreamScenes Enabler 1.2.exe as administrator 2. Click Enable 3. Click Finish 4. Restart your computer. 5. Go to the folder C:\Windows\Web\Windows\DreamScene, there will already be one dream, to launch it, right-click, select Set as Desktop Bacrground. 6. New dreams for installation, just throw in the right ...

It's an easy way to create animated, interactive designs. user interfaces; as it turned out, with it you can easily animate almost anything (not just interfaces).

Your first character animation

We will create this friendly ball

First you need to create a vector character in Sketch. You can use my finished example (along with the principle example) - download the sources.

Once the character is drawn (I use Sketch), make sure you group all the objects together so you can easily move them around in Principle (you can also group them in Principle, it's up to you). In this example, I've grouped the left/right arm, left/right leg, body, shadow on the ground, and the flag. We will move these objects into Principle to create our animation.

Grouping Layers in Sketch

Once you've drawn and grouped your character in Sketch, open Principle and select "Import". The character artboard will be imported into Sketch. Once imported, you will have a new artboard inside Principle.

Our imported character from Sketch

Select the artboard and duplicate it 4 times. Connect each artboard to the next, and the last to the first, using "Auto". This will just generate the animation. Each layer on each artboard will animate with a layer of the same name on the next artboard.

Attach each artboard to the next

Once all artboards are connected, select the arms, legs, torso, and other grouped elements that you would like to change on artboards 2 and 4. In the example below, you will see that the 1st and 3rd artboards are the same, but On the 4th artboard, the positions of the objects are slightly different. This creates a seamless animation loop. You could make only 2 artboards if you wanted, it would be even easier, but we are not looking for easy ways :)

Animation in final form

That's it, now let's record the animation.

Animation recording

Principle has a built-in recording tool. However, when previewing, the animation loops. Unfortunately, Principle does not provide easy way to start and stop the animation at the right time. Therefore, it is quite difficult to record a perfectly looping animation. But I found a solution. I record one complete cycle of animation as a GIF, then I import the gif into Photoshop (or any other gif editor) and remove the frames so that the last becomes equal to the first. Resave the gif and you have a great “loop”!

What's next?

This is an example of a simple and fast animation. I'm sure adding more frames, and moving and aligning parts of the character carefully can really bring the character to life better. Principle offers a ton of options for animation, and in this post I've covered the most basic ones. If you create your own characters, share them in the comments - it's very interesting to see the result.