For my animations I decided to take the shortcut with Mixamo so I can get caught up to finish up everything else I need to do for this project. I did the rigging in Mixamo and used the default idle and walk animations. I did have to do a little manual tweaking on the rig to get the accessories on the backpack to work – they were warping too much so I had to cut them from the model that was put into Mixamo. After I exported the animations, I placed the sword and the potions onto the model and manually skinned them so they wouldn’t deform as the character moved.
I think your animation came out really well! It looks super life like.
Good job! your walk cycle is super well balanced and your overall vibe is awesome. I was wondering, am I imagining the animation on the backpack while the character walks or did you intentionally put it there? Either way I absolutely love it and can picture the soundscape that would come from it (ex. the bottle clinking from tapping each other as he walks).
Yes I see animation on the back pack too. I am wondering if the animation is from the mesh simply squashing and stretching from the skin weights of bones in the humanoid rig. Either way, I also really enjoy the bottles clinking together. I am impressed that you re skinned your character with the added props, I think it took some extra time but was well worth it to have theh props work properly on your character.
But I’m not sure, because I can’t really tell which bones would cause that movement. I’m not too familiar with rigging or 3D animation.
It’s awesome that you got Mixamo working and were able to customize the skinning for the props. I wasn’t aware you could adjust skin weights of a mixamo rig! That makes their rigs more appealing as a starting point for fully animated characters.
I like that the backpack moves with the character as they rotate- those deformations are looking very believable.
I’m impressed with the rig, and attaching the sword/potions objects to not be morphed was great attention to detail! This is a nitpick, but I would have the character lean forward a bit more if your camera will allow it. It would make more sense for weight distribution to have the character leaning forwards at all times given the heavy-looking backpack. Looking at the second view of his idle animation, I almost expected him to fall over