I tried making a gif file because I figured it would be the best way to get a handle on animation cycles. I still had to cut some frames though because the tail was acting weird like it always does. I probably should’ve of tried the fluid sim, it looks a little odd without the liquid deforming but ya live and learn. I did figure out how to make a specific bone in an armature follow a curve which is good, even though I didn’t end up using it.
if its moving: its animated.
fluid sim would have most likely produces a big mess, they can be very awkward to come to grips with. a dynamic paint mesh would probably give you better results. the tea being a canvas and the swimmer being the brush.
as far as your animation goes, you have a long pause where the swimmer comes to the front of the cup, maybe nip a frame from that section to keep the swim cycle smooth.
also i think you would benifit from getting hold of the cgcookie animation fundamentals course. its a bit dated but only deals with actual animation ( no time wasted telling you how to rig and model/texture stuff). or find something similar on you tube but i’ll be surprised if you find anything quite so in depth. ( cue the flood of awesome animation tutorial links…!)
Yeah you were right. There were a couple duplicate frames mixed in from when I was messing with the tail causing the stuttering. Hopefully this fixes it or it’ll end up being some math type thing which I’ll never figure out.
Thanks I was tired of messing with it, what with all the (select all, copy, edit, click, edit, paste that was involved )and would of chalked it up to internet something or other. I think it runs a lot smoother now.
Did you model the fox yourself? It looks cute
Thank you! Yes I did. I made it for a fan animation for presshearttocontinue last year…geez it was that long ago already? I’ve been seriously slacking. You can see the model better here http://www.youtube.com/user/ARandomPervert/videos I added hands with fingers since then and toes and it could probably do with some proper texture mapping and an actual mouth. Honestly I should probably rebuild it from the ground up but I already put so much time into it I don’t know if I could bring myself to shelve it at this point.