How do I animate a whip?
How do I animate a whip?
I want my character to have an Indiana Jones style whip but I can’t figure out how to make him do the actual whip action.
I’ve created 3 different sculptures of the same whip, each in a different position to perform the whip motion. I thought if I could somehow key frame one to the next and then fade them, it would look decent. (Although, even if I did that, I would still have no idea how to allow him to equip it and have it attached to him to use in different locations others than the location I keyframed. I’m still learning)
Otherwise, I would use animate and speed it up, but there is no way to contour the shape of the whip.
I’m really at a loss. Thanks
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You can't fade them, but you can turn them on and off with keyframes for a stop-motion effect. Did that not work then?
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Try animate the 3 whip positions on a timeline for better effect.
You could go all out & do a frame by frame whip using paint.
You could build multiple sculpts either & animate them frame by frame on a timeline.
No matter what way you choose to build it, a natural looking whip is going to be quite a bit of work but you'd learn a lot in the process on animating. -
'@TAPGiles @CLOUD1985
Thank you for your advice!
@TAPGiles , I tried, but not sure if I did it correctly. Basically, I put the starting position whip in the character's hand and added a keyframe to the scene. I started recording with the keyframe, simply clicked the whip to select it and pressed stop recording. This was my starting point keyframe. I then moved the first whip out of his hand and moved the second whip into his hand and repeated the process with the keyframes. I did it one more time with a third sculpt and then added all the keyframes in a timeline on the same line and when I ran them together, it didnt do anything. I tried different methods weith the keyframe and never got the result I wanted.
@CLOUD1985 Thanks for all the suggestions! Originally I wanted to use the animate gadget, but I realized I can't actually manipulate the whip itself. Once it's sculpted in the L1+Square edit mode during sculpting, I can't bend my curve shape anymore. During the animation, I can only rotate and move it about.
Also, I am not sure how to animate 3 whip positions on the same timeline. I imagine I would run into the same problem I had with the keyframes.
I have 3 different sculpts right now and tried to animate frame by frame with the keyframe but it wasn't working. Is there another way to do this?
Here is the optimal thing I thing. I'm wondering if I can somehow add physics to the rope part of the whip itself? Then I can create an attack animation by literally whipping the whip. And when it's not in use, it will look way more realistic because it's flailing about. I see people do this physics effect with hair and clothes, and even the little cone girl for the tutorials (her arms are manipulated by momentum and velocity.)
How would I make a sculpture piece (or painting) obey physics and movement? -
Try add all of your current whips to the character hand & group them with the hand. Make position 1 visible & the others invisible.
Scope into the group & add a keyframe & record position 2 visible & the others invisible.
Add another keyframe & make position 3 visible & the others invisible.
Add the keyframes to a timeline one after the other & press play to see how it looks.
Add more whip positions & keyframe them as above for a more natural look.
Keyframe the puppet arm as needed to make the throw the whip animation. You can add these keyframes to the same time line & fiddle with them for timing.
There is obviously a lot of work in this & I'm trying to boil it down to bullet points as it's difficult to adequately describe the solutions to complex problems in a short piece of text
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