Jump Animation

After the first failure of an idle animation, I tried my luck in doing a Jump Animation. The character would be jumping onto a surface, to give myself a bit of a guideline for it, Dominic thought it be best if he recorded me doing that action as it would be something to study as a guide line for the key poses (apologizes to the lecturers in advance for the video - it was purely for study purposes).

I studied the part of the video that was in slow motion. From the video there, the key poses I had to make sure were perfect was the start (0:04), to the bend half where my arms where down (0:05), to the where my body no longer goes down (0:07), the part to where my body now stretches up-right along with my foot coming off the group and on the ball of my foot (0:09), (0:10) my body in the air and my feet tucking up more - so my legs don't hit the table, and finally the contact as I land on the table (0:11) feet are firmly planted and I lean my body forward slightly to shift the weight from the back to the front - which'll mean I don't fall backwards off the table.

Fig 1: Shoulder issue

Now I had the key actions needed, I had to get to creating the animation itself. This didn't turn out well also - there main issue I had was the arms - it could of been how they were rigged or how well (or badly) I did the influences for those parts of the arms but when I moved the shoulders and rotated them some of the mesh comes out (Fig 1) - I would of switched to IK for the arms but with the issue that I spoke about in a couple of posts not resolved (but worked around) - couldn't risk it so it meant that the arms are just dangling at the side - which is a shame as you saw in the video above the arms' movement do play a key role in it as well and would of given it more life. I will embed the video in this post now.

Another reason for the failure was that I didn't bend the top part of the body more, and here's a picture to show why I didn't (Fig 2). 

Fig 2: Bend Issue

The back bends awkwardly and you can also see that at the buttock area that the mesh moves where it's not supposed too. and moving the lower back control gives it a really awkward hump when it's in this position. (Fig 3)

Fig 3: Awkward hump at the lower back when I move the control that affects that area

So, from the video of the character, you can see that the back is too straight and it looks a bit like a frog jumping more than it does an actual person. 

It seems more to do with issues with the set up of the character more than anything, especially for things such as this - here's hoping the walk attempt pans out much better than the previous two attempts.