Planning is key to making a good animation sequence.
- Carefully plan out what you intend to do with your robot. Time spent planning will save hours when it is time to animate.
- Write a script, draw a thumbnail sheet or storyboard. Detailing how your robot should move for each piece of dialogue.
- Pick out and underline operative words in each piece of dialogue from your script. This will help you make better acting choices.
- Think about creating strong poses with the robots body. Consider opposites, silhouettes and negative space around the body and how the pose or gesture reads from a distance.
- Act out the script and become familiar with how it should be delivered.
- Making a video of a someone acting out the scene can be a useful reference.
Recorded speech is the most natural sounding method of generating a compelling performance, but allows you little editing flexibility. The polly TTS engine used by Ameca is a strong substitute which with some care and attention can be almost as versatile. Using a natural sounding voice without much speed or shaping distortion will assist in making your performance believable. Experimenting with different spellings and punctuation can help smooth out intonation and timing. As with most animation methods, time spent on small details will have disproportionately rewarding results.
You can also use your own audio files in your animations. To add a new audio asset to your project, simply drag the desired audio file into either the timeline or the assets manager. Please note that Animator currently only supports files in Ogg format.
There are two common methods for how 3D animation is created. The first is called 'Straight Ahead' where the animator will not plan too much, and animate the finished details as they go. This method can produce good results, but can be frustrating if changes are required later in production.
The other method is often called 'Pose to Pose' and involves building up your animation with careful planning, adding layers or passes of detail as you go.
The method which we would recommend and seems to work best with the Animator in Tritium UI is the Pose to Pose method.
There are no rules to how you might go about animating. Everyone likes to animate differently.
Below is a list of guidelines to keep in mind when starting a project.
- Plan to animate by building up your work in passes. A finished animation sequence takes time to create and can become complex if you don't have a logical approach.
- Start by organizing your audio and sign off on it. Doing this will minimize changes down the road and save time.
- Become familiar with Key Poses, Breakdowns and Inbetweens. These are animation terms which describe different types of keys.
- Consider making use of the stepped, linear and Bezier features. These can make all the difference when working out movements.
- First pass - Key all the key poses. These are the strongest most important poses which define actions and gestures.
- Move key poses around to get the desired timing. At this stage you should be able to see which poses are working well.
- Second pass - Add breakdown poses. These are crucial to creating interesting movements and better timing.
- Third pass - Add inbetween poses. These refine the movements in between the key poses and breakdowns.
- Consider Ameca's real world physical limitations, such as head and torso movement speeds and keeping the arms in safe positions.
- The real life robot can only move at a certain speed which could be slower than the timing you have specified in placing your key poses, but should be acurate in the robot visualisation.
- Leave eye darts (rapid eye movements) and blinks to the very last. Doing so will keep you animation easier to manage until you are happy with the body movement.
- Create nice arcs with the arms and head. Breakdown and inbetween poses help define smoother more natural movement arcs.
- Try not to twin movements. Twinning is a term used in animation where body parts tend to mirror one another and are synchronized. Your key pose can be a mirror, just try to make the movement to the pose asynchronous. Even the slightest delay will help make the movement nicer if everything has some offset.
- Use moving holds. When people move they don't gesture and hold still, they keep moving. Subtle movement in and out of gesture poses helps sell the performance.
- KISS "Keep it simple, stupid' is a valuable acronym to keep in mind. Clear poses and simple movements between them will work best on Ameca.
- If things are not working and you are spending too much time being frustrated whilst animating. Maybe its time to take a step back. Don't be afraid to go back to the drawing board and start over. Its always better to spend time planning what you intend to do. The end result will always be better and often get produced faster with a solid plan in place.