Original subtitles

- [Instructor] With our center of gravity

and our feet polished,

it's gonna be way he's yours to now polish the hips

of the character.

To get rid of any visual noise,

I will ID arms of the character using the rig UI.

So let's expose the hips rotation curve.

And keep in mind that the hips can either be pushed

by the supporting leg or lead the leg, pulling it.

For example, on the section of the animation,

as the weight is totally shifting toward the right leg,

the hips will raise toward the right leg,

because they are pushed by the right leg.

And our goal is not to know which curve to use,

but to figure it out based on the character motion.

The weight is on the right leg,

so I need to slightly raise the hips toward the right.

I'm testing different curve.

The Y rotation curve seems to be the one

that will do what I need.

And I tweak this curve rig-wise.

Most of the motion of the torso of our character

is generated by the torso root or center of gravity.

So most of the time,

once the center of gravity is polished,

polishing the hips is mostly smoothing out the curve,

so that we don't get harsh angles or distorted torso shape.

And then I tend to rotate a little more

to chest controller than the hips controller

As you can see, I'm pushing and pulling

along the way of the curve,

so that I get smoother transition

from one extreme to the other.

On frame 47, I will push down a bit

the Z quaternion curve,

because it will make the hips to twist a little further

into the punch.

Since the hips are leading the punch,

it's where the energy come from.

We do need just after the impact them

to slightly overshoot.

And then I'm realigning the hips with the rest of the body,

so that I don't get a too distorted trunk.

This little push on frame 47 will create a slight overshoot,

and that will better sell the impact,

because we will have a slight glitch into the hips rotation

just after he hit the bag.

And since the hips are pulling the leg,

I will propagate a bit the slight overshoot

into the left knee, by playing with the pull target.

We can see the pull target shifting after frame 47

to the left, but I will just pull a bit the curve

on frame 50 and 52 to create a slight overshoot

toward the inside.

As the hips rotate, the knee is pulled inside,

overshoot a bit, and then get back into its position

on frame 58.

(air whooshes)

Polishing the chest will be mostly about making it drag.

A lot of the force in boxing comes from way you deal

with your center of gravity,

so basically how you move your feet and your hips.

Having a strong upper body is really a secondary factor

to the power of your punch.

This is why we can make it drag it,

because this is not the primary force

into the punching motion.

The twisting of our character chest is led

by the Z quaternion curve.

So that our character torso root is twisting

toward the left, I will make the chest drag

by inputting a bit of delay into the Z quaternion curve,

meaning that I will offset any extreme pose,

and I will push the curve toward its previous value.

This is a very easy method that you can use

whenever you're trying to achieve a dragging motion,

whether it's the finger, a pony tail, or whatever.

You just delay the keys of the controller

based on their position in the chain.

The closer they get to the tip of the chain,

the further you will offset the keys,

and I will apply this concept to different degrees

for the chest.

The more strength the character will put into his punch,

meaning that he will contract all the muscle of his torso,

the tighter will be the dragging.

So I may not offset by your key, every pose of the chest,

but rather have a rise to previous pose, and then overshoot.

For example, here, I will push up the Z quaternion curve

on frame 44 and 45,

but then I will push it down to create the overshoot.

Pushing up the curve create the drags into the twist.

Pushing it down create the overshoot

and sell more power to the hook.

Now you have to be careful

not to smooth out the motion too much.

A good way to input a bit of texture and impact to the hook

is to use the location of the chest.

As the character is moving up very fast,

I will pull the chest down.

I will squash it onto the hips,

but then as the character hit the bag,

I will slightly pull the chest the back.

So I will make it drag a bit.

And just after the impact, I will push it forward.

So basically you move the chest opposite to the punch,

and then you move it toward the punch.

It will feels like the chest of the character is bouncing

due to the impact of the hook.

Don't hesitate to push this pose further away,

pushing forward over one frame,

and recovering over two or three frames.

(air whooshes)

From there, polishing the neck

and the head is pretty straightforward.

I'm using the tweaker bone at the base of the head

to calculate the motion path.

And from there, I will walk as we did

in the previous segment of this animation.

We are going to make the neck dragging compound

to the chest.

Since the neck is following the rotation

of the chest controller-wise,

the element of work to polish those curve

won't be that big, but just for our eyes,

it will beat the previous pose

by pushing the value of the curve

toward its previous value or offsetting in in time

by one frame.

Then track your arcs.

You can see here, I have a very clean arc

made by the pace of the head.

And since the head comes from the left,

I'm tweaking the value of the curve,

so that the head move a bit more to the left

during this transition move.

And then as it hits the next pose,

I will make it overshoot a bit, one or two frame,

after it hits the extreme pose.

Technically, I don't have that much tricks

to teach you here,

but to watch the motion path

and make sure you create as smooth arc as possible.

It's exactly the same method as what we did before

for the arms.

We were tracking the elbows,

and then playing with the rotation curve of the upper arm.

We were modifying the shape of the motion path.

At no point was I focusing on the graph (indistinct),

but mostly on the arcs made by the elbow.

At this stage, it's tweaking each pose frame by frame,

whether you're doing these for the rough editorial

or directly in the 3D view port doesn't matter,

but your arcs must be super clean.

For example, here, as the torso is rotating

toward the right, I will rotate the neck to the left,

so that it is dragging.

And then after the impact,

I've pushed the neck to the right,

so that I get a nice overshoot

and we feel like the head has a lot of weight and momentum.

And as I feel up here with the result here,

I will do exactly the same thing with the head.

Instead of tracking the base of the neck,

I may track with the top of the head or the tip of the nose.

From there, you will see

that it's very, very straightforward.

When the head is raising,

I will lower the chin a bit.

When the head is getting down,

I will raise the chin a bit.

When the head is turning to the right,

I will make the nose drag to the left.

So we are repeating the same method over and over

along the whole animation.

There is just a moment with the specific controller

where we are going to break the rules in the way

to create more impact.

If you remember, when we were watching the reference

of Liam Harrison throwing a big hook,

there is a lot of rotation in his head during the impact,

and this is what I want to reproduce here.

And they want to get that into my animation too.

But instead of having a recoil in the head,

I want to hold during the drag,

and then move it away as fast as possible.

To do so, I will create a little plateau

with the Z quaternion rotation.

This way the head is looking at the punch, so it dragging.

And on the next frame, I will push the curve way down,

so that it rotate the opposite way.

And it creates a very impactful rotation of the head

just after the punch.

From there, I will smooth the curve,

so that the character is out of this pose.

From there, it was all about adding some extra detail

to the animation of the torso.

First I've checked the pose of the head

from the camera angle.

And then using its location,

so moving the head in space,

I've exaggerated a bit the impact.

Then I've used the tweaker controller

to add a very slight stretching to the head

whenever it's moving super fast in screen

on this specific frame,.

As for the arm, this will fake the motion blur.

Then I will play with the tweaker controller of the torso.

I will select them all,

and they will insert a key frame on every single frame

during the hook

This way, I'm sure that those controller

won't interpolate from one frame to the other.

And from there, I will use those controller

for two main reason.

First, I want to slightly reshape my character,

so that there is not that much breaks in his silhouette,

and this way, I offer better support to his line of action,

but I will also use them to create a bit

of a shaking his body whenever he hit with the hook.

On frame 48, I will select the tweaker bone

in the middle of the spine between the hips and the chest,

and I will push it forward.

This is subtle details that will bring a little more impact

to the current animation

as if the body of the character was projected forward,

because of the momentum of the strike.