Original subtitles

- In this video, we are going to polish the

chest controller, the neck, and the head.

Regarding the chest,

I will start with the X Quaternion rotation.

In this case, it controls the tilt forward

and backward of the chest.

And the method here is to emphasize the motion we add

in the root of the torso.

So when the character is pushing up,

the chest will be pushing down.

And when the character is falling,

the chest will rise a bit.

So it's very close to the motion we add on the torso root,

but we've a one frame delay.

Contact frame is on frame two,

and between frame four and frame six,

we have the fastest move downward

as the chest is reacting to the impact on the ground.

Then the chest is raising in a smoother fashion.

Regarding the twisting of the torso using the

Z Quaternion rotation seen in the beginning of the chapter,

during a fast run, arms and shoulders are leading the motion

because they are pulling the body up.

And their motion is directly linked to the torso twisting.

So you can see here, I'm highlighting the current chest

Z Quaternion rotation,

and in slight transparency,

we can see the Z Quaternion rotation

of the torso root controller.

And we can see that the torso root is slightly delayed

compared to the chest

because the chest twist is leading the torso twist.

Then you will find our usual mechanism.

The twist is going fast during the passing pose

and kind of hold during the air pose.

With our chest polished,

we can now jump onto the neck and head.

The head and neck should not be something

that complicated to animate during a run cycle,

but I did a mistake,

and I don't want you to get into this pitfall.

When you're running, your head is pretty stable,

meaning that it doesn't move that much up and down,

left to right, etc.

So that you can focus on your target,

where you're going.

So your neck is currently compensating the movement of the

chest and torso.

The mistake I did was trying to animate

the neck and head with the neck folder still enabled.

And see that right now, my head is moving a lot and

our character looks more like a chicken than a human being.

Probably in the same case.

To fix this easily select the X key bone,

which is the properties bone, and hide every channel,

but the neck follow channel.

On there on frame zero set the value of the

neck follow property to zero.

And now duplicate the key on frame 24.

So now our property value is zero all the way,

and the neck is no longer following the torso.

It means that the neck is no longer aligned

with the torso either, which looks pretty painful.

The neck controller selected in the graph editor,

I've hidden all the channels, but the X Quaternion rotation,

which is the tilting forward and backward.

And what I will do is that I will offset the whole curve

on the y-axis in the graph editor

until the neck is aligned.

Due to the master neck controller behavior,

we can see that the neck is slightly bending forward,

which doesn't looks pretty good,

but we can easily fix it by selecting the first tweaker bone

of the neck, or forward kinematic bone,

and reposition it in the 3D view.

Once you're done with this controller,

you can select the second tweaker bone of the neck,

and rotate it the opposite way,

so that we get a more natural shape for the neck.

From there, we can select both controllers,

get rid of all the other keys,

but the one we've just created.

So basically all the keys, but keys on frame zero,

and duplicate the keys on frame zero to frame 24.

With our neck shapes corrected,

we can now get back to the neck controller

and work on its motion.

Since the neck rotation is now isolated

from the rest of the chain, the torso root, and the chest,

the head wobbles way less than before.

And we can now animate the head X rotation,

a bit as we did for the chest X rotation.

As the character falls, the head is dragging a bit.

So it's raising.

After the impact of the contact frame,

the neck bends forward as the head is falling.

Do need to bring a bit of

up and down motion to the neck with the X rotation

because the head has weight, but not too much.

Then I've used the Y Quaternion rotation and

Z Quaternion rotation to stabilize the head in space.

Since my Y curve was messy,

I've decided to remove all the keys between

frame zero and frame 24.

Then I reset the value to zero by moving the whole curve

and switch back the end goals to auto clap.

Now we have a clean curve we can work with.

Go on to animate the head position and stabilize a bit

the head in space.

When I feel that the head is moving to the right,

I move it to the left

using the Y Quaternion rotation curve of the neck.

We don't want the head to have no left to right motion,

but we do want to reduce it

so that the run looks more controlled by the character.

As usual, you can double check the curve as a reference,

but don't forget that if you don't have the same timing

in your run cycle, my curve may not fit.

You need to understand the principles.

Then worked on the Z Quaternion curve

with the same goal in mind,

kind of stabilized a bit the head.

I didn't work the Z curve that much.

I've kept the values very subtle.

It was just to fix a bit the head position frame by frame.

So I don't have that much to add to this since it's pretty

close to the process I was applying to the Y rotation curve.

Just looking at the head,

trying to stabilize its position in space,

but I keep a bit of side to side motion.

In the lee,

I didn't pose the head that much during the blocking,

so all my rotation curves are flat,

and I will only work on the X Quaternion rotation curve.

As usual, we want to bring motion,

but as explained before,

I don't want to feel like the head is wobbling in

all directions and my character can't support

the weight of his head,

but we want to make the drag a bit,

but not that much.

To do so, the tip is to track whether the

chin or the nose of your character.

When the head is raising,

the chin will drag a bit down,

and when the head is going down,

the chin will slightly rise.

And we are finally done with polishing

the whole torso of our character.