Animating 3D People with Animator
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I was going to try to correct some of my character problems but found that I could no find a satisfactory pivot point for the lower leg segment. I tried to find another character in the 3D warehouse but did succeed.
I like the guy you have swinging the lantern. In your wireframe view, it looks like he would be a good candidate.
I also want to create a scene that does not have all flat surfaces so/we could look at the ability for the character to navigate a hill/valley environment. I wish I had the skill set of you and Nukeman.
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Hey Dave, congrats, I see you are making steady progress towards your goal.
Honestly, I'm guessing animating people in SketchUp will always be pretty limited, but it's interesting to see how far you can take it. And, I get the appeal of staying within one software, because moving characters from one environment to another is typically a pain in the butt.
Should you wish to expand your focus at some point I'd be happy to discuss Hitfilm (free) and CrazyTalk (cheap), both of which are available for Windows and Mac. But I'll hold off for now so as to not further interrupt your current project.
Keep it coming, watching with interest here.
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Here is the model you want. I've provided the no longer functional MSP joints with axes that you can use as pivot points. It includes essential pivot points for walking and running. In MSPhysics, I use the pistons to lift the legs using a kind of hip movement. This is important for overcoming uneven terrain.
The joints in the neck and hips are important for more natural upper body and shoulder movement or for head and stooping movements.
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Thanks for sharing faust07 but I have a couple of DUMB questions.
- I assume the pivot points I see are from MSPyhsics. How do I remove them? (I do not have that plugin)
- How do I get the character to show up with the normal clothing and etc.?
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To 1.) Yes, they are from MSPhysics. I left the joints in the model to make it easier to find the right pivot points for the body parts. The joints can simply be deleted or the layer can be switched off.
To 2.) What do you mean by normal clothing? Maybe turn off SketchUp transparency? -
@faust07 said:
To 1.) Yes, they are from MSPhysics. I left the joints in the model to make it easier to find the right pivot points for the body parts. The joints can simply be deleted or the layer can be switched off.
To 2.) What do you mean by normal clothing? Maybe turn off SketchUp transparency?DUH!
Honestly, I was not aware that MSPhysics saved the pivot points like that. I would create the same pivot points with Animator but they do not show up like that.
I am also experimenting with a character walking along a path that does up/down hill.
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Smaller topographical bumps can be overcome quite easily with MSPhysics characters. If it gets steeper, new movement sequences have to be programmed. What I've wanted to test with a model for a long time is climbing stairs. When time comes, advice comes ...
The most difficult part of setting walking or running movements is coordinating the lower and upper thighs, as the lower thighs commute with a delay.
The example shows the interaction of physically active geometry, joints and envelope geometry. In addition, many small scripts are still working in the background ...
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I've been exploring human animation in Cheetah, a Mac only 3D app.
Poser is a more serious effort focused entirely on human animation, Windows and Mac, $150-$200 from https://www.renderosity.com/
I've been making my way through Poser tutorials, looks pretty promising.
The animation tutorial in the above series is found here:
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So I bought Poser. Found it on a sale for $80 (usually $200). Sale link here:
Poser Pro: 3D Art + Animation Software for Windows & Mac | Neowin
Bring your creative vision to life! Poser Pro will help you easily design your own morphs & more
Neowin (deals.neowin.net)
Installed Poser, and spent the morning exploring. Wow, Poser is WAY better for animating 3D characters than anything I've been doing previously. I'm abandoning all earlier techniques to focus on Poser, and wish I'd done this a couple of years ago. Dang, I wasted a lot of time on tools I should have just ignored.
Here's an introduction to animating in Poser:
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Well Poser looks very interesting if you need/want to have that level of animation and audio.
My original idea was in response to Nukeman's original post to show that animation of 3D characters was possible in SketchUp without having to combine multiple videos to show an animated character in a SketchUp scene. Yes, I agree that doing so with tools like Animator and MSPhysics does take a lot of work.
Bottom line is that, at least for now, doing all of this entirely inside SketchUp is not really the right way to do. IMO, SketchUp is not a good tool for creating game like environments. Again, IMO, SketchUp is a great tool for doing architectural or product models and even including some level of animation as a way to present the model/product. In those environments the best option combining the model and animated characters might be a tool like Twinmotion. And even in that environment it is my understanding that the animation of the characters is somewhat limited (you can not control all aspects of the character animation).
I had planned on trying to show an animated character walking across a terrain or even thought about trying to animate a character going up a set of stairs. I think that everyone has already demonstrated that, while possible with a great amount of work, the current tools are not the best toolset for achieving something like that.
In closing, sorry for the long post, I appreciate the responses we have had in the thread. I wish my skills were better at delivering and look forward to any additional insight on the topic.
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