For the Next Meeting - Learn Character Animation

Hello,

For the next meeting we will be learning about character animation.
This post will have links to Movies that are relevant to Rigging and animating a character.

So in essence, watch the movies, learn how to Rig a character, and then animate it.
We will be going over some or all of these at the next meeting.
If you don't see what your into, add a comment so we can cover it at the meeting.

All videos grabbed from here.
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77002

This is a very important plugin called ProxyPick.  You can create handles that are easy to
locate, to animate important bones.
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Proxy.mov

Place bones in a character for rigging purposes. (Also Using weight maps to help select areas of the mesh)
This is an excellent tutorial on bones.  I learned about a lot of new tools, and I'm liking it.
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Bones.mov
Things gleaned,  where is that select next keyboard shortcut, that's nice.
Display Subpatch to 1, but render to 3.  So The everything is faster.
Set subdivision order to last.  For rigging purposes.
Bone x-ray is your friend.
Face it in positive z axis to make rigging easier.
Name your bones per position.  Like cog (center of gravity) head, Lt_leg(left Leg), Rt_foot, etc.
Bone Twist to orient your bones, so they act more like you expect.
Joint move and tip move, Tip moves everything, Joint is specific. Select the mesh to do it. I.e move where the bone rotates,
say your arm bone bends the mesh a little too close to the shoulder, move the joint out a bit.
Frame 0 is your setup frame, bone tools might not work on other frames.
Mirror Hierarchy is nice.  Build half of your model and mirror it. 
A slight bend in your bones helps tell the ik solver which direction they should bend.  I.e at the knee bend the bones a little. (in)
Use R for rest.  If you use the side view, the bones your draw are at 0 point.  If it's a leg or arm, and you move it.  Hit R to reposition
the resting position.  If not when you activate the bone, it will use the 0 point coordinates.

FOot RIg.
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/FootRig.mov
Gleaned, No IK, and really easy to use. I knew about this setup, but his explanation was concise.  I think this would be an awesome setup for pose to pose animation.

This is a simple how to of rigging Ik for legs.
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/IK.mov
Gleaned from this is the new Gimbel lock fix.  You select your bone and click on Setup(tab)/modify/orientation/record pivot rotation.

Cartoon Joint RIg
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Joint.mov
Gleaned, Shows how to add a slider, and one morph target to get a sharp or spaghetti like elbow in a cartoon character.
Really simple.

Endomorph
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Endo.mov
Don't use the Base Target, make new ones.  Leave base as your Start.
Use a period to make your lists in the requestor.  Like head.mouth or head.mouth.

WOw, this is great.  Animate a wheel isn't necessarily Character Animation, but
watching this, they updated Relativity.  They added links to expressions that do concern character animation, like follower and occilator, and several others like keeping the hips (bone) between the feet bones.
I just thought of maybe adding a slider connected to the oscillate expression applied to the knee bones. You could
make a character shake at the knees with a slider.
At the end of this Video He talks about the slider plugin.  Goto Object Properties/Geometry/add slider. 
You can add a slider to animate a specific part of your character.  Swivel R2d2's head using a slider.

ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Dr_Wheel.mov

IF we have time at the meeting, we might try to use this video in a creative way.
I thought of some ideas, Like having a null distance object that as it gets close to a door (star trek door, or iris)
A character could wave his hand over a panel, and the distance to the panel would operate a morph of the door opening.
This video concerns using nodes to drive endomorph displacement maps based on distance.
ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/md.mov

Ok. 
Get your free objects from the web, and add a rig to em, and animate them.
I'll see you at the meeting.

Antonio