Hello Sweden here there is tons of good videos but still i havn't seen any tutorial from start without inbuild motions i'm trying now to make in 3D all our Kunf-fu stiles (5) in IC and will see a tutorial how to make martials arts/kung fu moves from frame 1----> what ever i try my character looks lika a robot i wan't to see a tut that do kicks/jumps/flip/punch and so on or combination of them all from start and not use IC inbuild/contents store motions. I wan't to make my own library for our stiles but my character looks lika a robot 

Our Sifu (60year old) has over 150 forms(Kata)  (over 35 difference weapons) in his head any i will try to print it out. Thats why i bought IC to do it with. Self i have around 15 weapons and maybe 50 forms around
Best regards Kenneth IC newbie

Hi Kenneth, welcome.

Animation is an Art, like Kung-Fu is. In this forum you won't find much tutorials nor info about the Art of Animation itself but rather technical information about the iClone tools and features.
Your character looks like a robot in the same way a Kung-Fu beginner looks like a.. well.. you see what I mean : )
There is no magical button in iClone that will make your animations look good.

I see three possible solutions to your issue here:
1) You learn how to animate, but this might take some times (like learning Kung-Fu)
2) You find an animator who will do the animations for you.
3) You use motion capture instead of animation to capture the movements.

Martial Arts animation is extremely difficult though, especially if the animations must serve as educational references.
Myself I practice Kendo and I have a project similar to yours and I wouldn't use anything else than motion capture for this (I'm in the process of acquiring the Neuron Perception mocap system but this will still take a few month).

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Thank you very much and that was i thought the answer should be it's an expensive hobby and even more if i need to buy mocap system and yes i have think about it also
i'm to old "retired" to pick sensor on my self and we don't have longer any member that can help us with all moves for it "not to day" so thats why i will try it with 3d and with the gear i have

Thank you so much for the help

If you're hoping to quickly capture his knowledge, and I feel it's a worthwhile effort, your best bet is probably going to be
filming him doing the katas. That way the information is secured until you can figure a way to do it with animation. The smooth 
movements you are hoping to re-create are specific and therefore, as Grabiller has posted, your best bet will be to use mocap.
(motion capture)

pete



http://www.youtube.com/user/peterblood50?feature=mhee

Yes i know i will try my best with the software i have
Thank you

Just another option that I have done in iclone5 that worked reasonably for me.
And now that iclone 7 has curve editor capabilities I am going to try it again for some of my animations because I don't have motion capture tools.
Too busy with other things to spend the money on it.

I get a film of a character doing the motions I want.
I put a plane_A surface prop into the iclone project and add the film as its diffuse map
I load a character and position the plane and scale it so the films character is about the same size as the character
Find the frames on the timeline where the film characters motion is at a good position to make a pose for the character and mark that frame so I can come back to each of them to create the pose.
Then I goto each frame 1 by one. Position the character and use edit motion layer to make the characters pose the same as the film.
When satisfied I save the pose with the same number as its frame, go back to frame 0 so the character is in t pose and remove its animation.
Now goto the next frame and repeat until I have all the poses.

Now I can create a new project load the character and goto each frame (as saved) and load the pose onto it
Then I would just play the animation and make any adjustments to fix issues but I think the curve editor might assist that. Haven't tried it yet.
Grrrr so many things I want to do.....so many things to learn to use

Anyway, as I said its just a thought. I would appreciate that if you do something like this that you give some demonstations of it that would assist me to know how it works.
I think that motion capture tools is definitely the better way. Its just fairly expensive and I don't think I would use it enough to approve that cost for me



i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Thought I would show the result of one of my attempts for the method I describe.
The samurai walks along the mountain path and does several 360 degree turn around as he is walking forward.
That turning around was a film of myself walking and turning around and I used that film to make the poses of that turn around
This one was actually done in iClone6



i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

And here is an example of why I do it from saved poses rather than doing it as a step by step animation.
That was how I did it at first but I didn't stick with it for long. Why?  Because for me I find that going to a frame and creating a pose and then going to the next frame and adjusting everything from the previous pose to the new pose and then going to the next frame and adjusting to the new pose from the previous pose. I find that the bones quickly get into positions that I cant easily tell their positions well and strange things start happening as I manipulate the poses. Especially arm/shoulder joints, leg/hip joints and waist between hip and chest.

Here is my first attempt of doing it like that. This ones not too bad but you should be able to see what I mean with the stange positionings
You might do it OK that way but I find it easier saving each pose and then resetting the character back to the T pose before I start doing the next pose.

Oh, and unfortunately I had moved the video somewhere else and the project couldn't load it back onto the plane. That's why it isn't showing the actual video on the plane that I used to animate this.


EDIT.
Oh and she is not wearing clothes only so I could see how the animation was working. No other reason.



i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit