Animating Limbs

[bruceb9981]

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for opinions and feedback on animating limbs, specifically arms. Character Animator does great on animating faces, lipsyncs, and walk cycles, but I find it challenging to animate the limbs exactly how I want them. I'm finding it easier to use After Effects for the limbs to ensure it hits the mark exactly when I need it.

How does everyone else animate limbs?

Does anyone have any best practices for the limbs in CH?

[CoSA_DaveS]

Ch does not yet have a way to limit dragger movement such that arms aren't over-stretched and elbows don't bend backwards. One way to work around this is to draw a variety of arm movements and then trigger them (with all the options in a swap set so they are mutually exclusive). You can combine this method with Draggable handles to avoid having to draw too many.

For example, you could hand-draw an arm-out-and-pointing pose and mark the hand with a Draggable handle. Then, after you've triggered the pose (which can be a single frame, or an animation that ends on that frame), while holding on the arm-out image you can drag the hand around with the mouse to make the finger point in various directions.