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TOTAL DURATION: 1h 51m 16s
An in-depth walkthrough of the tools, features and workflows for animating KineFX Characters that have been rigged using APEX in Houdini 20.5. You wlll start with the basics such as setting up selection sets, then move to more advanced features. By the end of the workshop, you will have the knowledge and understanding to animate in Houdini.
This workshop was delivered at the Houdini HIVE Horizon event held in Toronto. These are recordings of those lessons so that animators can work through to gain a deeper understanding of this toolset.
The Jimmy character is from the short film Turbulence by Tumblehead. You can learn more about this project from the HIVE Horizon talk titled Avoiding a Crash Landing: Finishing "Turbulence."
Learn how to add the Electra character and enter the APEX Animate state.
Create selection sets for your character and save them out for future use.
Learn how to use your selection sets as display groups of controls and pinning sets to manage keyframes. Use selection sets with the global transform mode to speed up your posing by moving groups of controls around any pivot.
Use different transform handle options to suit your personal preferences. Create locators to use as extra pivots and then use animation sliders to quickly move, create and add breakdowns for your posing and animation.
Add objects to your scene and set them up as props to be animated with your characters.
Copy animation from one file to another then use bookmarks for scene management and to focus on specific areas of the timeline. Also, flipbook your animation then use Mplay blocking to time out your poses in Mplay then push the new timing back to your scene file.
Use Animation Layers to non destructively add animation for quick changes and experimentation. Learn how to add another character to the scene, copy and paste a pose from one character to another and how to use the mirror with plane tool to adjust a character’s pose.
Move one object's control to follow another control’s animation then update its keys. Turn on motion paths to see and adjust the arcs, spacing and keys of an object in the viewport.
Use Dynamic Motion to quickly get physically accurate motion of an object or character in the air by setting the contact frames of the beginning and end of the motion then baking the keys for easy adjustments if needed.
Use the Dynamic Motion advanced options to reposition, change the height of the motion and have your underlying animation keys be retimed to the new motion for you.
Use Dynamic Motion to not only adjust an object’s motion, but also retime a character at the same time, and add layers on time to do adjustments as needed.
Ragdoll lets you add rigid body dynamics on props very quickly, adjusting the behavior with a few simple parameters and baking that motion out to a new layer for non destructive results.
Learn the basics of using ragdoll on a character and how you can adjust some parameters to tell it when to turn on, when to follow animation and to adjust the underlying animation to drive the ragdoll motion.
Explore an example of using a locator and the global transform mode to create a simple setup to pose your animation around different pivots and being able to move groups of objects around using sets, all the while having the ragdoll update the pool ball motion without needing to hand key all of them.
Build your own tools by using HDA's and set up a retarget tool that is reusable. Now you can use a simple prop to quickly get the motion you want, and then add a simple pyro setup to allow animators to flipbook their animation and see some temp fx. This will give better idea of the look of the shot without needing to wait for another department to work on the shot.
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COMMENTS
LukeP 6 months, 3 weeks ago |
This is amazing!
LukeP 6 months, 2 weeks ago |
Honestly, fantastic intro. Thanks so much for putting this together. Really looking forward to what the future of animation in Houdini holds.
Seyonce 6 months, 2 weeks ago |
Thanks for the tutorial. Please will you be sharing the files for the Retarget and FX section. It's not included in the download file.
mackerBaehr 6 months, 2 weeks ago |
Hmmm.. In the last lesson, although the title mentions "Build your own tools", Warren just quickly says he build his own and doesn't share how he did that. The HDA is also NOT included in the project files nor in the hip-file. Also the network view of it is so small in the movie that the structure is not readable. This is very frustrating because the subject is very important to me. Therefore this lesson 15 seems more a show off then something we can learn from. Can the (structure of) the HDA also be shared, please?
Mirko Jankovic 6 months, 1 week ago |
Exactly what I was looking for!
Next step or one of them is for SideFX to provide range of good rigged characters for people to work and practice on, until we get proper autorigging tool, like mgear for Maya or similar ones for blender that are more user friendly and straight forward :)
bskochii 6 months, 1 week ago |
Wonderful series, thank you so much!!!
SHo0N 6 months ago |
Will the retarget tool not going to be shared? If not then that's a bummer. I really need a way to retarget animation to Apex since I'm not that savvy to create my own tools as an animator.
warrenl 6 months ago |
Part 15 was actually only intended to show other possibilities you could do when using houdini, and not part of the animation workshop per se, as retargetting and pyro are sections unto themselves. The HDA I have setup for myself is very rough, and built only for my limited needs and uses, and as such, not ideal for a retargetting tutorial. It was more to demonstrate that you can build tools for yourself, specific to your needs, and use them when needed.
If you are interested in retargetting, a good place to start would be in the content library example :
https://www.sidefx.com/contentlibrary/kinefxapex-workflow/ [www.sidefx.com]
MugoStudio 1 month, 1 week ago |
This is Great! It would be so cool If APEX converted or was able to transfer an already Rigged and skinned character from kinefx to APEX
cwrenniks 6 days ago |
This has been a fantastic series Warren, really appreciated! Would be great to have one more video that shows the best way to export the fully animated scene and characters to be used in LOPS or even a different DCC. Thanks again!
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