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![Tail Swish [gif test]](http://d.furaffinity.net/art/ruaidri/1550876046/1550876046.ruaidri_tail_swish.gif "Click to change the View")
Let's see if this works...
So a while ago you may remember I posted this: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/29881497/
I was chugging along alright, making progress with that model, but then I hit a bit of a snag- her hair. What I had in there was really just a placeholder, and I didn't have a working, animateable hair setup at the time. I started looking into how to make and animate long, free flowing hair, and all I kept finding was stories about how hard it is. If professional studios struggle to make it work, I don't think I've got much of a chance. So I backtracked and started creating a new model, this time going with Syandene, my fox girl. She's got relatively short, spiked hair which is waaay easier to control. I also decided to do the smart thing this time around and actually get her rigged up and fully moving before I texture paint her, as on the Cinnamon model I kept noticing issues with the model once she got moving, and trying to fix them would mess up the textures.
Rigging is just about the most frustrating thing I've ever done, but after quite a long time I've got her moving with a decent control scheme, I think. However, the guide I was following didn't have any setup for a tail, since the guide was just a human character, I had to come up with a set of tail controls on my own. Which brings me to this gif, which was a test to see if the method I made could be used to decently animate the tail, or if I'd have to work something else out. Seems okay so far! It was also fun to do some general experimenting with animating, which I haven't even touched yet. Haven't even looked up any guides yet, this was me just fumbling around with the graphs to see if I could make a thing happen. As you can see, I couldn't even get it to loop smoothly which I'm fairly certain is a very basic thing, so I've got lots to learn there, but for now I'm not even fully finished the model yet- still tweaking and refining. But I've been wanting to share -something- and I'm growing impatient, so here's this.
Now let's see if this actually uploads as a gif, or if we're all just going to get a still shot of some fox butt....
So a while ago you may remember I posted this: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/29881497/
I was chugging along alright, making progress with that model, but then I hit a bit of a snag- her hair. What I had in there was really just a placeholder, and I didn't have a working, animateable hair setup at the time. I started looking into how to make and animate long, free flowing hair, and all I kept finding was stories about how hard it is. If professional studios struggle to make it work, I don't think I've got much of a chance. So I backtracked and started creating a new model, this time going with Syandene, my fox girl. She's got relatively short, spiked hair which is waaay easier to control. I also decided to do the smart thing this time around and actually get her rigged up and fully moving before I texture paint her, as on the Cinnamon model I kept noticing issues with the model once she got moving, and trying to fix them would mess up the textures.
Rigging is just about the most frustrating thing I've ever done, but after quite a long time I've got her moving with a decent control scheme, I think. However, the guide I was following didn't have any setup for a tail, since the guide was just a human character, I had to come up with a set of tail controls on my own. Which brings me to this gif, which was a test to see if the method I made could be used to decently animate the tail, or if I'd have to work something else out. Seems okay so far! It was also fun to do some general experimenting with animating, which I haven't even touched yet. Haven't even looked up any guides yet, this was me just fumbling around with the graphs to see if I could make a thing happen. As you can see, I couldn't even get it to loop smoothly which I'm fairly certain is a very basic thing, so I've got lots to learn there, but for now I'm not even fully finished the model yet- still tweaking and refining. But I've been wanting to share -something- and I'm growing impatient, so here's this.
Now let's see if this actually uploads as a gif, or if we're all just going to get a still shot of some fox butt....
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Yeah, rigging is pure torture. But, you seem to have managed it well enough! Certainly the results speak for themselves. Getting a perfect loop is a lot tougher that it seems, especially once you start involving dynamics like cloth physics, hair or liquid simulations. But even just regular canned animations present several "gotcha" moments.
The animation is really good for apparently just messing around! The tail turned out especially well! There are scripts out there that can help make animating chains like tails (and tentacles) move in these sorts of patterns. With a little work they can look about as good as your swinging tail here does, but take a lot less time and save on repeated effort. I use a heavily modified version of one such script for my own wagging animations. Although I don't know what tech you use, some of the logic might at least give some ideas.
I started by messing around with Blender's particle system and then abandoned it pretty quickly when nothing worked and everything sucked, haha. Funnily enough it was when I finally learned a way to do hair, the thing that made me have to abandon the first model, that I also found the way to do the tail fur. It just uses hair cards, simple 2D geometry and some transparancy to make them look like strands instead of cards. You may already know all about 'em, I suspect they're fairly basic tech, (I'm still so new I don't even know what I don't know yet) but if you don't, here's where I learned how to make them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZBgDJ6mRcU
Used the particle system to cover the tail with cards, converted to mesh, and some very quick weight painting and it was done! As for the rest of the body, that's just a 2D texture with a whole mess of material nodes webbed together and a bit of bump-mapping.
As for the animating, it was actually pretty simple- most of the bones simply copy the rotation of the bone above them, so I can do most of the work by manipulating a single control bone. I have another bone I control about half way down I use to make the tip of the tail 'lag' behind the rest a bit. Just two bones, a couple keyframes, pretty quick to put together actually!
I'm not too concerned about looking realistic, and I have very basic hardware so I need to keep it pretty simple or my poor computer won't be able to render it. In the interest of being able to actually render stuff, the tail just uses a mess of hair cards everywhere, and the rest of the fur is just a 2D texture so it's naturally going to look pretty flat. But it was that or spend some serious dosh on a new computer! :P
Not bad. You plan on making a habit of animating?
A little idea, it is on the fingers, add a slight movement and for the foot too.
The tip of the tail follows the rest of the tail, it does not go in one direction before the rest. I've made a quick sketch to illustrate it https://i.imgur.com/FniBHhz.jpg
I hope you won't take this critique badly. The animation is still very good and I love the fur texture!
Thanks though!
Would you consider doing some sort of a guide or releasing the control rig you created? I've been trying for a while to find one as well, but I hit the same snags as you. Thus now all I have is a nice tail that moves more like a bloody metronome than anything else...
I'm still making some tweaks and adjustments to the rig as I notice issues- just yesterday I had to tweak the tail and legs for various reasons, but once I get to a point where I think it's fully working I could see doing a guide or something, yeah!