BMX Tricks

[gunslingerblack]

indian air, i think the bike needs to have just alittle more realistic physics, what i mean by that is, alittle more jiggle when it's grabbed, i think what it is in alot of these animations is that the bike moves slightly before it's grabbed, or doesn't look like the laws of physics and momentum and gravity are beign obeyed.

indian seat grab, very nice character movement, the bike moves alittle towards the hand before the hand "grabs" it you might wanna set ur keys to adjust for that. add alittle more bike jiggle too, it just smoothly goes there and back. (this was overall ur best i think)

nosepick, this was tough i had to actually look up footage of the nosepick, it seems like once again your character is moving towards a goal instead of seeming to be driven by real physics. the tire bouncing was a nice touch but the nosepick i saw the wheel came up then down then with the downward force of the front coming down and the back momentum of the rear tire is what he used to get the tire around, also at the end of that second spin your rider saves an unsavable balance position and goes flying into the air with seemingly no problem or effort, i would suggest at the end of the second spin having him in a more balanced position and adding some leg bend and animatino in the body to show that he is propelling the bike back out onto the ramp.

backwards grind, the rider takes off from the ramp, with no ollie whatsoever, the front wheel defying the laws of gravity goes up? while he spins the bike around, grind is good, and the exit starts to be good until the rear wheel stops in midflight, that exit would be good if you just let the bikes momentum carry it and rotate the bike while it's moving.

wallride, good physics on the way up , would have liked to see alittle more effort on the part of the rider, and not having him totally stop moving right before the ramp. you should try and keep him at an angle to the wall instead of perpendicular, also he locks onto the wall at a certain point which makes the look unnatural. when the rider straightens his legs out the bike should come off the wall almost immediately, not hesitate and stay on the wall like it does. i think if u took the bike off the wall on time it wouldn't look like he was defying the laws of gravity again.

fa fa nu, im pretty sure the wheel would't move like that in real life, instead i think the rider would kick out the bottom of the bike to get the wheel underneath him, instead of it looking like it was moving on a path. hold is good, bike turns with no input from the rider, besides him turning the handlebars, there should be a lean from him to get back on the pipe.

360 tailwhip my second favorite, first of all, the front wheel hits the ramp and after it leaves instead of going up it goes forward, i dont think it would immediately go forward like that. my big problem with this one is at the end, all the way at the end, right before he's about to land, the bike stops in midair and pivots so that the rider can land perfectly, i suggest you leave him land crooked and fix the landing in the time after, where he has to make a subtle turn off the landing to not fall.

wallride to no footed can can, difficult to see ,but the rider def stays on the wall for a few frames too long.

cross footed nose pick, here u can see much easier the problem with the first nose pick, the back wheel magically lifts off the ramp, it doesn't look like momentum at all, the rider should make a motion to physically plant the front wheel before the back wheel lifts off the deck from momentum.

340 540, first off, nice takeoff for the 340, the momentum dies alittle too fast (once again concerned with that perfect landing) the back wheel magically lifts off the ramp for the 540, and there are some points in which the spin is dangerously close to being unbelievable because of the balance factor. then the rider goes to make a motion to get back on the ramp and takes off into the air, tone that down a bit or dont just make him take right off, try and add some physics to it. these are basically small fixes, keyframes here and there, the basic animation has the right flavor so keep going.

[Twister47]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take some time tomorrow and revise some things you pointed out, you had some good points. As I said, its hard to see some of this stuff when you've stared at it for hours and know what its suppose to be.

I was a little unsure about a few notes you made however, I was hoping you could clarify a bit more so I'll just go through and comment on these tricks/your comments.

Indian air - Good call on the hand 'grabbing' the seat. Actually, the hand is suppose to be on the seat at all times, it slipped off there... thats a mistake. Could you elborate more on the bike 'jiggle' you were describing? What about it specfically makes it seem unnatural to you?

Backwards grind - This is probably my least favorite out of the bunch, I just dont really like any of it. I think there needs to be more of an ollie, esp as far as his body and legs go to get him off the ground more naturally, I agree with that. But the wheel comes up because he pulls it up. I suppose I could make his arms have more motion to emphasize that. When you say on the exit that the rear wheel stops in midflight... are you talking about the point where the bike is perpendicular to the rail?

Fu Fa Nu - "im pretty sure the wheel would't move like that in real life, instead i think the rider would kick out the bottom of the bike to get the wheel underneath him, instead of it looking like it was moving on a path." I'm not sure what you meant here exactly. Which wheel and what's it doing that looks wrong to you?

Again thanks for the comments, I'm learning fast here (only my second character animation project) and every bit helps.

If anyone else has got anything, I'm all ears.

[eyepeefreely]

I was curious what sort of references you were using or if you were using any. On some of them it seemed like the bike weighed nothing to the rider. A couple of times in spins the rider seemd very off balance. Something else I noticed was that in couple the bike and rider lost their inertia as soon as they started a trick or even when they came down to land. If gunslinger mentioned all of these then please disregard :) it seems like he gave you quite a bit to work on :D but if you want me to elaborate I will. I did like them though. The show alot of promise. :thumbsup:


eye.

[gunslingerblack]

Could you elborate more on the bike 'jiggle' you were describing? What about it specfically makes it seem unnatural to you?

seems like ur bike is very, uniform in it's movement, im pretty sure that when someone is flying in midair and moving his bike according to his seat , that the bike doesn't move as if it were on a pre programmed way, just some small movements to add to the overall flavor of the trick is all.

But the wheel comes up because he pulls it up

take a look at the animation, it looks like the wheel is on a preprogrammed rail and it's travelling along it until it reaches the grind

When you say on the exit that the rear wheel stops in midflight... are you talking about the point where the bike is perpendicular to the rail?


the wheel stops right after leaving the grind. the bike would naturally proceed forward but yours rotates around a fixed point that is the rear wheel in midair.

fa fa nu, the rear wheel goes up the halfpipe and instead of the rider kicking the wheel in to balance on the wheel comes up and then comes in on a "preset course" that looks quite unnatural. basically your animation has the whole bike go up past the top of the halfpipe and then move in as if it were on rails that dictated its movement, when the rider is at the top of the pipe he should kick the rear tire so that it moves underneath him and provides his balance on the pipe. if that's not a good enough explanation it wont take too long for me to draw a picture of what i mean.

hope that clears everything up

keep going

[Twister47]

Thanks guys, I went back to a few of those this morning and got kind of frustrated and since I still have a lot more tricks to do I figured I'd leave them over the weekend and come back to them a little more fresh.

I was curious what sort of references you were using or if you were using any.

Yea I have referances for every trick, and I've been pretty much mimicing the angles when I work on them. But this is partly why I get so frustrated with some of these. Because I go by the frame with the referances and set keyframes on the most important places (landings, take-offs, certain points in the rotation, etc) and block out the animation. Then I do the little details, but I feel like a lot of the animations are too fast, too jerky, when they should be the exact timing that I'm looking at in the referance.

So I've got a lot to play around with.

Moving on with some of the other tricks in the meantime, (With the limited time I have and the dozens of tricks I have to do, I figure its best to get all of them 'finished' and then go back and fine-tune with any time remaining.) I did a Back-Flip to Manual (added to the list in the first post) which is probably going to look pretty rediculous to you no matter what since its one of the more amazing tricks I've seen in the batch. But I really tried to focus on giving a better feel for momentum in this one. Let me know what you think.

But, as I said before, this is my second character animation project so this is all pretty new to me but I feel that I'm learning fast, and you guys definatly are a nice kick in the ass too. Anyway, I just wanted to say props to anyone who can animate well, and hell, props to anyone who tries... its a lot harder then I think a lot of people get credit for ;)

[eyepeefreely]

If you dont absolutely have to have a certain amount, I reccomend refining the ones you already have. It might get to the point, for whatever reasons, where you can't go back and tweak all of them. It happens ;)


eye.

[Capel]

they pretty much all lack weight. i'd say take two or three of them and really refine your curves. get that weight working and you'll be in good shape.

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