KM character animation samples??

[inks]

Has anyone done any character based animation using KM or built a site using KM? Give me some url's....please

[sanman]

Yeah, character animation really fascinates me.

I wonder if in the far future, it might not be possible to come up with a plugin that streamlines the workflow specifically for character animation purposes.

Ever heard of the Character Studio plugin for 3D Studio Max?
It's really nice. It really streamlines the workflow in Max, for doing character animation.

I'm a big fan of anime, and I was talking about this in a thread on the Anime board here.

Anime is based on poses (eg. frontal pose, one-quarter perspective, profile, etc)
Typically anime characters tend to switch rapidly between these pose perspectives.

Anime is heavily stylized, and tends to follow a strict set of style rules. I think a plugin could really capture a lot of that.

If you ever go to one of these anime drawing tutorial pages, they always show how to draw eyes in a particular way, how to draw a head in a particular way, etc. Rules, rules, rules.

It would be cool to have a Style Plugin, that allows you to do different stylizations. Each stylization would have specific settings associated with it, and you could tweak them to make your own custom ones. Just a thought.

[BradBradleySL]

I am currently working on character animation, which has been taking me awhile, designing characters, rendering them into the program, etc. etc.
So I will make sure to post when I have a little movie, hopefully by the end of this month, and all I really want to see in KoolMoves as far as simplifying the animation ability is a simple bones construct.
Brad

[Bob Hartzell]

My partner is an animator and is working on a bones functionality that he thinks will be superior to Moho's.

[TPhilipDolce]

A bones as well as autotrace would be HUGE! I just can't use this program for anything serious of my character animation until then. Moho is a very fine program,..but I do not believe it has a sound editing package. I may be wrong or gave overlooked it in my demo.

TD

[BradBradleySL]

The bone structure in Moho is pretty good, didn't go in depth, but any bone ability in KoolMoves would be great
When will boning ability be implemented?
Brad

[johnie]

Your Right.

Moho does not support sound. They suggest that you use magpie to add sound to the video.

[Bob Hartzell]

We will talk about a design this Saturday. When it will be implemented I cannot say.

[robgb]

I've done a small sample of character animation using KoolMoves. My concern with Moho is that it doesn't seem to allow you to do side to side head movements. I found this relatively easy with KoolMoves.

You can check it out at http://www.knuckleheadz.net

Rob GB

[johnie]

I did some really lame examples once.

Here they are

http://www.geocities.com/jsnider.geo/disharmony.swf

and even lamer

http://www.geocities.com/jsnider.geo/examplea.swf

did I mention that they are lame.

when I get around to it I might even make a movie
...Then again maybee not.

[johnie]

You will have to cut and paste the URL's though. I don't know.

It could be Geo****ies.

[BradBradleySL]

Done in KoolMoves, hmmm, like the second one, simple, but pretty good detail, hey its a new program, cut yourself some slack.

Brad

[sanman]

Hey,

Y'know, I was talking about predominance of poses in anime, and the quick transitions that usually occur between them.

It would be cool to have a program that was specifically devoted to this style of character animation.

You could set up your main poses, each associated with particular perspective viewpoints (ie. one-quarter view, frontal view, profile, etc), as well as with IK skeletal positions. The job of the animation engine would be to create the tweens for transitions from one pose to another.

You would then be able to edit those automatically-created tweens afterwards if you wanted, inserting additional keyframes, etc.

This would allow for tremendous reusability of movement.

Poses, once again, should be defined mainly relative to camera angle, and also with respect to skeletal IK position.

That way, even if the character is static within the scene, but the camera angle changes, the pose will shift appropriately. I think that's how it's done manually in hand-drawn anime.

[johnie]

Bones will help you do what you are wanting to do.

And yes both of the examples were done in Kool Moves. The second one was the first Kool Move drawing I ever did. It took me about 1 or 2 hours to do it.

The first one,which won't load all the way evidently- (Geo****ies times it out and it is the maximuim size for a Kool Moves SWF) was done by drawing it on paper, scanning, and converting to WMF. There are well over 2,000 shapes in it. Which is why it is so large.

My advice to anyone wantinig to do character animation in Kool Moves, or even in Flash, is to keep the number of shapes down. It's the KISS principle.