I’m animate this boat rowing sequence, and amy trying to get a realistic motion for the boat. This is how I’ve tried to do it (refer to screengrab below for image): 1st channel - this is a continuous motion, which pushes the boat forward at all times. 2nd channel - this pushes the boat forward when the boatman pulls at the oars, creating a surge forward.
The problem is, needing to repeat the surging motion for each oar stroke, I copied the keys for the second channel, so the second two are identical to the first two. This means that between the second and third keys (where no movement should be happening) the surge goes backward. I’m pretty sure there’s a simple solution to this, I guess all I need to do is change the coordinates for the key or something? But I have no idea…
Also, actions are beyond me at the moment (tried using them and it got v. messy :P) and haven’t really got time to learn how to use them properly (project due in tomorrow!!)… so is there a simple solution to this?
You thought of using a stride bone for this animation? From the sounds of it it would probably be a lot simpler.
You would simply animate the movement of the rows and the character rowing. Then loop that in the NLA editor, and let a stride bone do the movement of the actual boat.
Theres about a billion stride bone tutorials out there for walk sequences. But things like this are also what that feature was intended for. Here’s a link to the tutorial I was using when learning stride (in case you haven’t used it before):
Sorry for the double post, but I just saw that you said you needed a QUICK solution. Hehe, yea, learning stride might take a little time then, and it definitely involves learning actions. However, I do think this is the simplest solution. Unfortunately you have a learning curve and a time limit you suffer from.
However, if you dive right in you might be able to tackle it that way. Actions aren’t difficult to learn at all. They’ll save you a lot of time in the long run, and help you organize your working environment.
You simply pull up the Action editor and start placing some keyframes. Then Bam, you have an aciton. You can then pull it up in the NLA editor and press C in the NLA window to make it a strip (which is basically simply an editable action in the NLA editor.)
The stride bone thing however, might take some hours of experimenting. I guess it just depends on just how much time you have
Thanks! That is a MUCH simpler way of describing actions. I’ve skimmed through a few tutorials which made it seem a lot more complicated (probably due to the fact I was just skimming through rather than reading it properly). I’ll give it ago.
Strides definately sound like something to learn in the future. Thanks again.
