-
Programming “physics” for 2D animations…
I kind of like the idea of having using real-world forces controlling the properties for animations, and using scripting and programming methods to simulate various effects. I’m currently animating a bunch of stick figures walking on the screen. But I suddenly began thinking about it from a more physical standpoint.
Here’s the current problem at hand. There is a family of three roadsign figures walking across the screen. Each is holding the other’s hand, and the child is walking along in front. I thought it would be neat if the child could jump forward and “tug” at the mother’s arm, and it would increase velocity and have the characters react in a somewhat-realistic manner. Currently, I’m simply using placed anchor points and parenting to attach all limbs together, but there isn’t any actual code that determines the fact that the limbs and characters are attatched in any real-world manner. I know that with programs like Maya and Cinema 4D, you can create objects with various properties that behave in a very specific manner. South Park, for instance, uses Maya in order to have the characters behave in specific ways when programmed to… so that certain facial expressions also translate to particular body postions.
Are there any advanced tutorials on object-oriented scripting of physics and behavior of objects?
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com -
2 Replies
-
Wow… that IK tutorial is EXACTLY what I’m looking for. I had already done exactly what the setup was (minus the “effector” layers), since I animated the walking by simple looped keyframe animation, but with the addition of IK, things could get very interesting. Of course, with what I’m hoping to do, there are multipul figures, all linked together, so I’ll have to modify the code a bit to get what I want, but it should work.
Unfortunately, the finished spot I had to just make do without anything past simple walking, but I’ll play with making an IK version just for the sake of learning how… for next time.
Thanks alot!
Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up