[Diaries - Advanced] Body Animations (Patreon)

Pre-Requisites

Inverse Kinematics 

Have you guys ever wondered why your character animation feels unnatural? It seems as if the character you are trying to animate moves rigidly and looks like a robot. Fortunately, this diary is just for you. As a newcomer animator, I will explain my findings in form of points to keep things simple and easy to understand.

Rule of Thumb

1. Characters MUST Keep Moving, even if they are supposed to be idle

When animating a character, you need to ensure that the characters remain moving even though they are supposed to be idle. If your character is sleeping, it needs to have a breathing animation. Alongside the force of gravity to make the character's center of mass fall down for each sleeping pose.

When your character is standing still, it needs to have a breathing animation. 

If your character is sitting, it needs to have some spine movement, which indicates the character is trying to fix its sitting position. This movement can range from moving the spine backward, forward, left, or right, depending on the need to do so.

If your character is dead/passed out, and another character/the environment is applying force to the character, the force needs to dissipate for quite a while before reaching a full stop. This includes opening the character's casket, transferring a patient from one room to another, etc.

When your character is stunned due to numerous circumstances, the character needs to show an indication regarding its next possible move. If your character is overrun by the enemies, it needs to show a slow movement backward, to show the indication of planning to flee. In addition to that, it needs to show the character observing its environment to ensure that its next move can be executed properly or require a sudden change of plans.

2. Keep idle animation short and minimum

As I already explained in the previous point, idle animation needs to be kept at a minimum to make sure that the character feels alive.

3. Moving to Stopping - Support the moving animation with the stopping animation

To make the movements more organic, moving animation needs to be supported by the stopping animation. Moving animation usually moves normally while stopping animation usually takes longer to end. There are 2 kinds of stopping animation :

a. Spring Stopping Animation

Spring Stopping Animation means that your character's movement shows a spring-like movement when stopping. 

To achieve this, the moving animation needs to end in a position that exceeds the exact stopping location (moving overboard). 

Meanwhile, the stopping animation will try to correct the position of the bone into the exact stopping position. Remember to make sure the stopping animation is long enough to make it natural.

b.  Sliding Stopping Animation

Sliding Stopping Animation means that your character movement slides through right before heading to its appropriate stop. 

It helps visualize the dampening of force that was created by the character when doing a movement. 

To achieve this, you need to add a keyframe several frames/milliseconds away from the end animation. Then, you drag the final keyframes away from the previous keyframe that you just set. Make sure that the stopping animation is long enough to make it natural.

4. Make the Body Supports the Primary Animation

As a follow-up to the first rule of thumb, you can keep moving the body of your character to support the primary animation that will be the center of attention. 

If the character is conveying its ideas, the center of attention will be put on its face and its hand movements since this will be the part of the character that will move a lot. Make sure the body reflects the emotion during the delivery of its messages. 

If the character is mad, the body movement gets very aggressive.

 If the character is happy, the body movement gets pretty smooth and elegant. 

If the character is nervous or threatened, the body movement gets very erratic. 

5. Switching Pose - The Body Must Follow

Some might underestimate how a simple body movement could bring life to the character. As such, a lot of body movements in non-professional animations remain static when the character changes its stance or emotions.

Every kind of pose that the character will do needs to be reflected with a change in the body movement. This change could be as simple as ordinary forward/backward movement, or other complex body movements that will be needed during certain situations. 

If your character changes the hand movement, the body must reflect it too.

If your character gets into a combat pose, the body must reflect it too.

If your character lowers its guard down, the body must reflect it too.

If your character changes emotion from serious to excited, and vice versa, the body must reflect it too.

6. Stopping and Switching - Everything must keep moving

After your character reaches the stopping animation, it needs to prepare its next movement as soon as possible. This will give the impression that the character is alive, even in its supposed idle state.

Honorable Mentions

1. Please for the love of God,  use INVERSE KINEMATICS 

2. Use Softbody physics or Cloth Physics to simulate hair movement

Thank you guys for reading this diary, I hope this diary could help you guys in learning 3D.