|
By shil - 8 Years Ago
|
Are there some tutorials and tips around, covering characters interactions ? All the tuto's available have always only one character. What about interactions between two, three, or more characters. Interactions like hugging, pushing, fighting, playing, sport activities... etc. All kind of physical interrelationships.
5 years ago, in a interesting thread, the answer was, clearly said, "nope" (with the notable exception of mocap). And in between ? Can someone point me in the right direction.
Thanks for reading
|
|
By Christy0 - 8 Years Ago
|
Hi xialin,
There is an oldish pack (Terms Of Endearment) available in RL store, might be some tutorials associated with that.
https://www.reallusion.com/ContentStore/csproduct.aspx?contentid=AIC410DIENU030120100203002
:)
|
|
By shil - 8 Years Ago
|
Thank you so much for yours answers.
@sw00000
i start to looking for that now. Waiting for the new I7 WIP video about the Motion Graph Curve Editor in iclone. But it seems to me that character interactions are more about positioning and physics constraint (between characters). How to achieve this in Iclone ?
|
|
By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
|
The simple answer is... you fake it.
If two characters shake hands, or punch each other, you animate each character so it APPEARS as if they are interacting.
Maybe some high-end software does it differently, but that's how you do it in iClone (whether you use motions, keyframing, or motion capture).
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
Does anyone know if the various interaction (lovers, friends, arguments, etc.) packs work with the current iClone? It was a nice system, but I have no idea if it still works.
EDIT
I downloaded the free hug interactive motions with the floor dummy, and it does work! :)
It seems to be a scripted thing that does not add performs or operate commands. Maybe it used to? When I hit play, it did the expected animations. Although, I have not found a way to trigger them automatically in the middle of a scene. It seems to only work when the characters are dragged from the content manager onto the markers. I guess I'll look into this a bit more, as there a whole bunch of these packs available.
|
|
By eternityblue - 8 Years Ago
|
|
Gosh, I wonder how many years it will be before we have real physics materials that fully emulate real world interactions, like a character's derriere deformity as it sits on a leather chair, that also deforms, both acting with the physics of their real world counterparts. 10 years maybe? It is so hard to say with software.
|
|
By animagic - 8 Years Ago
|
|
eternityblue (2/8/2017)
Gosh, I wonder how many years it will be before we have real physics materials that fully emulate real world interactions, like a character's derriere deformity as it sits on a leather chair, that also deforms, both acting with the physics of their real world counterparts. 10 years maybe? It is so hard to say with software.
Well, there is a point of diminished return. It's like some movies that want to show you what great VFX they have thereby forgetting the story. Sometimes simplicity is better.
|
|
By eternityblue - 8 Years Ago
|
|
Uh, I'm talking about something akin to pbr but for mesh materials, it won't be diminishing returns after some amount of tech development happens. It will be a whole hell of a lot easier than creating a reach target and whatnot to get someone to hug someone else without clipping etc. At some point, I don't know when though. At this stage trying to do that might be diminishing returns, animating a big butt on a small stool, but since we're getting morph animation it would be easy now to make a morph in Blender and have the butt deform when sitting down, similar to the breathing demo they had in that video. Depending on the scene, it could be the star of the show. So even now, diminishing returns is pretty relative. I just think at some stage, it will just be the norm, emulating whole worlds very realistically in side computers. Maybe it would take a farm, but at that stage, servers as services would be very mature.
|
|
By mark - 8 Years Ago
|
Here's an old pre-viz I did for a cheesy soap-opera a few years back. Thankfully it never got funded. :P I updated it a bit but used all the tools currently available in iClone.. Motion Puppet animation, Motion Layer Keyframes, Avatar's Perform command, Transform Keyframes and Reach Targets.(no motion capture) It's pretty crude in spots but it is a "somewhat" realistic interaction between avatars. Hopefully all this will be much improved with iClone 7's new tools!!! ?? !! Oh and sorry for the TOS voice tracks but it was just a test ya know!:P
|
|
By urbanlamb - 8 Years Ago
|
|
mark (2/9/2017)
Here's an old pre-viz I did for a cheesy soap-opera a few years back.
I like cheese :)
I mean with classics like killer tomatoes and stuff cheese is where its at!
|
|
By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
|
@Xialin,
Remember, you get what you pay for. Here is my free example...
Keep in mind three things:
a) There are ZERO real interactions between characters or objects in the examples shown. No physics.
b) This was merely a collection of "experiments" I did while working on a project
c) I improved each of these in the final project. They never became perfect, but were adequate to tell the story without detracting from the moment.
THE SHOVE:
Each character was animated independently, but "together" in the same scene. I imagined the body motions each character would have. How would he shove, how would she react? Even the fall was manually animated, no "rag doll" physics.
GARAGE DOOR:
The door was a prop that could be animated via pre-defined Open and Close motions.
Then I animated Pinhead to fit the motion of the door. I simply put his hand in the right place at the right time.
In the final video, I added a "grunt" (and a different door sound effect) to make it more convincing.
MAIL BOX:
The purpose of this test was to experiment with the damage to the mailbox. I had four versions of the mail box; undamaged, and three more with increasing levels of damage. Each time he "hits" the mailbox, I simply turned visibility off on one, and turned on the next, more damaged, mailbox. The mailbox motion was manually keyframed. I could have used physics for that, but I decided since it was a one-time event, it would be faster to spend 20 minutes keyframing the motion that it would be to spend a couple hours fussing with the physics.
I learned some about how to animate him holding the bat with two hands. As you can see in this clip, I learned a lot about what not to do. ;) His pounding action was much betting in the actual project. I also moved the mailbox into his yard, instead of in the street. Oh, and of course I replaced the cartoonish sound effects. I was being a bit silly because it was an experiment. This video was also intended to be a bit of a teaser to let people know I was working on a Pinhead project.
SMOOTH CAMERA MOTION:
I have a tutorial on that. It's not a silver bullet, and isn't suitable for every situation, but it's a nice thing to have in your bag of tricks.
|
|
By michael7 - 8 Years Ago
|
xialin (2/7/2017)
Are there some tutorials and tips around, covering characters interactions ? All the tuto's available have always only one character. What about interactions between two, three, or more characters. Interactions like hugging, pushing, fighting, playing, sport activities... etc. All kind of physical interrelationships.
5 years ago, in a interesting thread, the answer was, clearly said, "nope" (with the notable exception of mocap). And in between ? Can someone point me in the right direction.
Thanks for reading
Hi xialin. Unfortunately it seems like the company standard nowadays is to forgo a real good technical manual in favor for internet word of mouth education. It's everywhere. That being said reallusion does have a number of how to videos they post and continue to post up on you tube. For example, without looking at what you are doing there is an easy way to have characters shake hands.
1. Go to create and select cube ( or whatever).
2. Place your characters in the desired position, with their hands clasping each other ( use edit motion layer for this ).
3. Place cube just above where the clasped hands are.
4. Select a character. Go to the Reach Target menu ( also under the animation menu ) and click on the hand corresponding to the character. Then click on the eye dropper tool and click the cube.
5. Do the same with the other character.
6. Now when you select the cube and use the move tool the hands and arms of the characters will move where the cube moves.
I originally saw this video using a pole for fighting sequences when I first bought iclone about 7 months ago, I tried to find it for you but I don't know where it is. So I went into iclone and figured it out. But check out their videos anyway, it's bound to be in there I just don't know where, and you'll figure out a lot by watching what they've done.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNV5zSFadPdlVwer9zldv8IxtAUhm-MQh
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
If you need lots of contact between characters, you can attach little cubes (or triangles, or whatever) to various bones at the points of contact. Then you have ready to use reach targets for lots of interactions.
So put cubes on the shoulders, hips, and head to be reach targets.
Holler if you would a video demo of what I'm talking about. :)
|
|
By mark - 8 Years Ago
|
This was an old "fighting" tute I did with iC5. Most all the techniques should work with iC6...I hope. The animations for the avatars were from iClone fighting packs and various animations I've collected through the years...
|
|
By shil - 8 Years Ago
|
Interesting informations here. Thanks for your sharing.
@Rampa. Yes, would like to watch a demo about your technique.
@Mark Like your video. Like cheese too :):)
I went check alan marques website. Glad to see a big guy like him on the reallusion forum.
Ok, so now i start with the basics. Experimenting and also faking interactions. Without physics but with motion graph and key framing following sw00000p's method.
Maybe some day we will have a ik feature, but between two different characters.:Whistling:
|
|
By michael7 - 8 Years Ago
|
|
rampa (2/10/2017)
If you need lots of contact between characters, you can attach little cubes (or triangles, or whatever) to various bones at the points of contact. Then you have ready to use reach targets for lots of interactions.
So put cubes on the shoulders, hips, and head to be reach targets.
Holler if you would a video demo of what I'm talking about. :)
I wouldn't mind seeing that Rampa, is the video on your you tube page?
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
|
Sorry. Been busy all day. I'll make it shortly. :)
|
|
By Rampa - 8 Years Ago
|
Here is a tutorial on setting up two character interactions using dummy blocks and reach target.
|
|
By Ziggy72 - 8 Years Ago
|
Excellent little tutorial Rampa, it's great that people care enough to make these. I started thinking about using it for trapeze artists, chains of them swinging about... :)
|
|
By michael7 - 8 Years Ago
|
|
sw00000p (2/11/2017)
[quote]xialin (2/10/2017)
Ok, so now i start with the basics. Experimenting and also faking interactions. Without physics but with motion graph and key framing following sw00000p's method.
If you.....
~ Pose
~ Block
~ Set Tangents
You are accurately controlling the animation.
....Nothing fake here..... You are applying animation skill. ;)
This is ONE way to do it. And it's adequate to " standardize " the medium so a skill set and a common language are shared. But it's also for the untalented, If you stay there. The talented will move past it and experiment and create new and other ways of doing these things, because they are the ones that can easily take what they've visualized and put it on page.
|
|
By michael7 - 8 Years Ago
|
Thanks for the video Rampa.
|
|
By justaviking - 8 Years Ago
|
Summarizing some options, in random order:
> Physics-driven interactions (okay for props, but not iClone's strong point for characters)
> Constraint-driven interactions (reasonable in iClone, but easy to encounter arm-twisting joint motions, and other unrealistic reactions)
> Hand-animated "faked" interactions, the keyframed iClone version of traditional cel animation (tedious, and so waiting for the graph editor in iC7)
> Motion capture (difficult to do if you're not capturing both actors at the same time, and possibly expensive)
> Non-iClone solutions (a more complex, and possibly more expensive solution, tough for part-time hobbyists on a budget)
Is that a reasonable summary, without digging in the specific "how" instructions?
Did I miss a major category from the list of tools?
|
|
By shil - 8 Years Ago
|
|
rampa (2/11/2017)
Here is a tutorial on setting up two character interactions using dummy blocks and reach target.
thank you a lot, rampa.
Very usefull
|
|
By Pixtim - 8 Years Ago
|
|
rampa (2/11/2017)
Here is a tutorial on setting up two character interactions using dummy blocks and reach target.
Excellent tutorial Rampa!
I would have been very happy to find it a year ago, when I discovered Iclone! :)
These tools are very effective but the settings are not obvious to find alone when you discover the software.
They are an important reason why Iclone has been integrated into my workflow!
|