Perhaps worth a try?
I have to get a new character from Mixamo and try to find something faster/simpler since your image indicates more the movement like drowning? Slow and mostly body moves like waves? I might have some ideas, but I would love to have that little input. Images can mislead a lot.
Yes I’ve seen some tutorials about modifying an asset without a rig, which works well for the figure character because it has these built in pivot points. But with an asset like the one here https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsu9mgepgyfdnlr/TPose.fbx?dl=0
I believe that the geometry would just fall apart with this type of approach?
So in terms of the effect I’m after, imagine that people are falling from a tall building, but in slow motion. So they are essentially looking like they are swimming, but they have a downward motion and in general they are “fighting gravity” if that makes sense? I think you could also imagine that they are underwater and being pulled down by a current and they are struggling to go back to the surface? Both those types of movements would work
This is the most straightforward set up I can think of.
I excluded, for now, the downward or speed details.
Just to get small feedback if that could work at all for you.
Here is a short little loop animation, 2 seconds, baked as PLA into the mesh.
The Step Effector separates all animation equally, so no puppet has the same animation, except you have more than 48 in it.
Some Effectors create more chaos, position, and rotation wise, while one Plain effector is purely responsible for the fall. I have set up a curve for that, so it accelerates a little bit over time. (Just eyeballing).
Hi Sassi!
That’s a great technique. I could combine this with maybe two or three different animations so I have enough variation between the source mesh and the effectors?
What technique do you use to bake the rig animation to PLA?
The PLA: I animated the Rig (joints) first. Starting by setting the first and last frame with identical keys. Then used a Point-Cache to get all the values Stored. I switched the Skin object off and used Cappucino with only PLA enabled (no P, S, R). Use the Shift+C shortcut to get Cappucino via Commander.
Yes, several animations will work. Perhaps consider a more extended sequence, and set here also the first and last keyframe identical, then animate some key positions of the puppet in the between. If it is long enough, the Step Effector will spread everything, and it will perhaps work as well as many different shorter sequences.
After the PLA was done, I extended the Timeline duration and used the Timeline> Function> Track Before/After to repeat the animation.
Let me know if I left a point un-answered, I’m happy to share more.
You put the Point Cache tag on the geometry right? I tried putting it on both the geo and the root of the rig, but in both cases it remains greyed out (can’t check the enabled tickbox)...
What am I doing wrong?
Yes, that’s what I thought…But I had opted to not import takes on this test and made sure I had Main Take active anyways.
See the screen recording below https://d.pr/v/HyNOSW
I do not click on shortened or camouflaged links. Sorry.
(DropBox, Amazon, Apple, Google, Adobe or Wetransfer only)
I’m happy to send an upload link, of course.
Thanks Sassi
It all seems fine except the disabling of the skin part…If I disable the skin the model gets disconnected from the rig…Maybe there is something I need to do with the point cache tag that I’m missing?
After the point cache has stored the information, the Skin object is shut off, not before.
If the Skin object is left on, the object will get the information twice, and it would be useless. (Except one likes to have the figure looking more like an abstract paint-stroke.)
I figured it out…Once the point cache was recorded I needed to turn off “Use Deformer”
Now my problem is with Cappuccino…I remember it was mostly used to record things that the user is doing in the viewport, but how do you get it to record an existing animation? Sorry if this is a super basic question, I think I haven’t used Cappuccino in years!
