All language subtitles for 08-09-03 Polishing part 03

- [Narrator] So now let's polish the arms

and the little details for the first chunk

of this animation.

But one thing I'd done
before publishing the arm

is that I've input a bit of details

into the toes of the right foot.

So I'm not using the graph editor here,

I'm just directly posing to camera.

When the foot is moving forward,

I'm making the toes dragging a bit

as if they were sliding on the ground.

I will later in the video,

revise the rotation,

timing of the foot as it rotates toward

the pinch a bit too soon.

I will offset it by a couple of frames

at the very end of the video.

I will start by polishing the left arm

and I won't be showing you my curves

because it's not necessary.

What's important is the process.

First I've tracked the elbow

by calculating the motion
path of the elbow tweaker.

And now think of what's happening,

the character is dropping down,

so I want the shoulder to drag a bit.

I want the shoulder to raise a bit

when the character is fully.

So I'm just spotting
which channel I can use,

which is the extradition channel,

and I just raise a bit the curve,

so that it raise a bit the shoulder.

Then I will do the same with the arm.

I want the elbow to raise a bit

while the character is going down.

And then for the next two frames,

I will fix the pose of the arm

so that it doesn't cover
that much the face anymore.

I will push a bit the forearm forward

and check out my camera view

to make sure that I see
the eyes of the character.

So while we may rely a
lot on the graph editor,

for the root motion of the character,

because it's super
important and it reads well,

whenever I'm polishing the arms

or the knees or stuff like that,

I'm just tracking the arcs on screen.

The graph editor does make sense to me,

but you don't need to

perfectly understand everything about it,

to be clever about your choices.

So now that I've fixed
the few initial pose,

I will track the rest of my character,

and it feels like it's popping too much.

To double check that I will
simply select the wrist tweaker

and calculate its motion path.

So what I will do by working

on the different controllers of the arm

and not really caring
about the graph editor,

is to reduce the gap
between those two frame,

especially the ups and down

because it's breaking
the flow of the punch.

So if we focus on the
shoulder of the character

between frame 12 and frame 13,

there is a big gap of shape.

On frame 12 the arm is overextended,

and so does the shoulder

while it's compressing on frame 13.

So I can find some kind of
in-between shape on frame 13

by moving a bit the shoulder,

moving a bit the arm,

moving a bit the forearm

and try to flatten a bit
the motion path of the fist.

Again, I'm not relying on
the graph editor to do so.

I tweak the pose through graph editor,

but also directly in the 3D view.

Next, if we follow along
the tracking of the wrist,

we can see that there is a arch angle here

and the fist of the character
disappear on the next frame.

All of these from the camera view,

not in our space.

So what we can do to fix this

is that we can make the elbow
diving little more down.

So I will slightly twist the arm

so that I get more of
an angle with the hand.

This way, I will be able later on

to create a smear into a
C-shape from the camera view.

Now in the next pose,

I will try to show as
much elbow as possible

so that the arms read well,

and it will also extend the
current pose of the character.

I'm sure checking my
character from all angle,

I'm tweaking the pose,

but as you can see,

I don't work that much
directing to the graph editor.

I work a lot directly on my character

a little later on in the animation,

same issue, same solution.

Here you can see from
frame 19 to frame 22,

I have a flat motion path.

So it will be better if we add a nice arc.

So the point here is not to know

what all the curves are
doing into this motion,

but choose the right curves

that will help me to fix this issue.

And if I take the arm controller

and then just check each rotation channel,

I will find one of the curve

that I'll need to raise a bit the arm.

They found the couple of curve

that will all meet to rotate the arm

the way I want from the camera view,

I can tweak them to create the arcs.

I will just regularly
update the motion path

and you can see in a few seconds,

I have fixed my issue,

and this is why having
a super detailed booking

before we switch to
spline was really helpful

because now we can focus
on improving the animation

in putting detail and
fixing the little arcs.

(sound whooshing)

As I fix the arcs,

I have now a motion path

I can full to bard my smears.

I will enable the tweaker bone in the UI,

and then they will jump
to the action editor.

And I will make sure
that I have a key frame

on all those controller on
the previous and next frame.

Around the current frame,

I want to build my
smear frame on this way,

those tweaker bone won't interpolate,

since they are locked before
and after the current frame.

Again, here, there is no magical trick,

I'm just shaping the pose.

So I am pushing, pulling
the different controllers

until it creates a nice arc with the arm.

I'm also breaking the wrist and rotating

the hand so that it's pointing
toward its previous position.

Try to keep the current arch in the arm

as smooth as possible

and focus on what will be
seen from the camera view.

On the next frame,

I will also try to cheat

and show a part of the
left hand of the character

in the camera view.

Even if it's only on one frame,

the fact that we don't
lose track of the hand

will help reading the animation.

Again here, there is no
graph editor involved.

From there even if I don't
see it from the camera view,

I am bulging the smear on the left arm.

Maybe I will have to present
this specific animation

from many angles.

Maybe I will have to tweak
the position of the camera,

both learning wise,

and to prevent any rework later on,

you should do this also.
(sound whooshing)

I will speed up a bit the
video for the right arm,

because in the beginning I'm
doing exactly the same thing.

As the character drop,

I'm raising the shoulder,

then from the camera view,

I will be tracking first
the elbow of the character,

and I will try to create a nice arc.

Also from camera view,

I will try to show as much
of the right arm as possible.

So I'm slightly offsetting the elbow

so that it shows it's
not cut or overlapping

with the chest of the character.

From there, I will calculate
the motion path of the hand,

and I feel like it's jiggling a bit here.

You can see that the path is not clean.

I have both a problem of spacing,

and my arc is not clearly defined.

I will manipulate the shoulder,

the arm and the forearm
controller until I get it right.

And at some point I will also recalculate

the arcs of the elbow.

Since I'm modifying the
position of the arm,

I may mess with the position of the elbow,

the arc of the elbow,

the spacing of the elbow.

Once I was done,

you can see that I have a clean arc,

that is easing into frame 15
before he's throw the punch.

From there, I was able to
work on the current spline.

so when we have switched to spline,

the right opened a lot around frame 16,

because of the forward kinematic mechanism

and both pose wise animation
wise and boxing wise,

this is not super efficient.

And there, instead of using
the interpolation of the curve,

I've decided to revert the current pose

and I've boxing wise exaggerated it

using the tweaker bone.

They're used to create
like a narrow with the arm

that will bench into the bag.

From there, I reworked
each frames of the punch,

working on all the controllers of the arm

to make sure that the
motion path of the punch

was as straight as possible,

and that the whole shape of the arm

was following this motion path.

So even the small orientation of the wrist

is important at this time.

And then when the character
is pulling back his arm,

the fist is currently falling down

and it feels like the arm
is heavy for our character.

While he's supposed to
be super bad bad-ass

so it doesn't fit.

Instead of having the
wrist falling down forward,

I reworked the shape of the arm,

so that the elbow is leading.

So I've made the elbow pointing down,

So is that I can raise the wrist

as if it was following through

or overlapping instead
of leading the arm down.

Those little details
will make the difference

because they communicate a different idea.

The initial pose of our
character make him lose control.

He feels weak and I don't like that.

We don't want that.

He's a bad-ass character,

so everything he does,

he does it with control.

Why the previous animation
might be mechanically correct,

communication wise it's wrong,

because it doesn't communicate
what our character is about.

And asking yourself this kind of question

is not a matter of skill level.

You might be struggling
with your mechanism

or body mechanism,

but you should beginner or not

always ask yourself those questions.

Your animation might not be perfect,

but if he does communicate

the right information to your audience,

then you're doing a better work

than having a bad-ass motion,

but nothing to say about your character.

As explained in the
beginning of the video,

the right foot was
rotating a bit too early,

so I just offset its rotation
by a couple of frames.

But once I was happy with the result,

I've made a final pass of details

onto this chunk of the animation.

(sound whooshing)

I did a little pass on the fingers.

I was originally planning

to have my character with open hands

most of the time during this animation,

because in Muay Thai,

it's more natural to have the hands open,

to be able to catch our upend.

But I've chosen to close the fists

because it will take forever

to spline in polish those fingers.

But while the educational
content would be super imitated,

the fingers are some hold
the limbs of the hand.

So they need to move with pupils.

They will help you to define
the shape of the hand,

and they can also communicate
something about your character

as seen in the posing hand chapter.

What I've done here is that
as the hand is going down,

I will the finger drug by
bending them a bit backward.

And just before the fist closed,

I have made the ultimate joint

to bend backwards so that it feels

like the fingers are snapping into a punch

more than they are crawling into a punch.

It will make the punching even snap here

to have the opposite hand

to also have a snappy motion.