Deer Test Animation – Maya | RedShift 

60 frame test of a deer performance. I might come up with a workflow tutorial for this one beyond just showing blocking and arcs.  Is anyone interested?

Download Deer Rig here:
gum.co/deerAnimRig

Notes on animating with this rig:

1 – You will get errors that say // Error: line 1: Cannot find procedure “CgAbBlastPanelOptChangeCallback”. //  over and over again and I cannot figure out where they are coming from or how to get rid of it.

2 – There are entirely too many controls on this rig. Remember! Keep It Simple and animate the least amount of controls possible and you will have an easier time revising.

3 – The rigger provides you with a pre-animated walk cycle, using the rig.

However, the cycle is stiff and animated in place which is useless unless you are animating for games. If you want to study the cycle to discover how to animate the rig, remember she animates all of those extra countering controls and there are some scary and unpredictable curves in there because of it (see image below of curves on the reverse footIk Ctrl that goes up and down with no meaning to the movement which tells me it’s just correcting shapes. Keep in mind, this is only one of the controls used to animate the foot motion for the pre-made cycle.

Don’t be lazy.  Try your best to animate cleanly and with intention.

I did not animate the – FrontReverseFootIk_ctrl  control at all.

Instead,  I animated with the foot and toe roll and the foot control ONLY. Nothing natural moves in perfect ellipses but it’s a good place to start.  If your curves look like the “stock market,” you will have a hard time interpreting what is moving.

You can see in the image below I am only animating 3 controls to make the foot motion and the only up and down curves are where I implement the ballRoll/Toe attributes to keep the foot in contact with the ground as it releases to take a step.

As an animator, it is your job to understand your curves.  The cleaner the workflow and the rig, the cleaner your curves will be.

4 – By default there is a humerus follow IK control turned on when you open the rig. I absolutely hate automation on rigs because it creates pops in the movement and then you have to use extra controls to counter the pops. Turn this off on the pole vectors and you can animate more simply.

5 – I prefer FK on the spine and neck for most character rigs because I can illustrate better weight through the hierarchical tree, but I found IK controls easier for a quad.

6 – I encourage using Visualize –> Motion trail to check your arcs.

7 – I pulled the pole vectors far away from the rig so they did not pop the knees.

 

Good luck!  And let me know if I should make a full tutorial!

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Angie Jones

Angie Jones - Artist | Educator | Animator

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