Animation newbie - Do you worry about character interpenetration with floor/objects?

#1

I’m still young in my Maya/Animation journey, so I’m working out some kinks as I’m working on my first project.

My question is about object interpenetration … do you worry about it when having a character interact with other objects, floor, characters, props, etc.? For example, when placing a foot on a floor, or on a step, do you need to check that you’re close enough to be realistic but make sure that the character is not interpenetrating with the floor or step? And same thing when the character has to hold a prop, or hit another character with a prop … what’s your approach to making sure you hit with the surface of the prop, but that you don’t interpenetrate the prop and the character?

And a specialized case … what if you want to show that a character has his/her face pressed up against a window … how would you accomplish that as far positioning/keyframing the character close to the window and showing that the flesh is smooshed but not going through the window.

Would appreciate your input.

Thanks.

#2

Of course it depends. I know its not a good answer but its pretty true…

Ive worked on films where its not really ‘too’ much of an issue but also on films like lego where we were extreeeeeeeemly strict about it.

Also…when something is stereo (3D) sometimes it can become a little more important.

In mono you can get away a bit more with ‘animating to camera…’

For the face against a window…

Some rigs might be able to handle it…some maybe not.

It could get passed off to FX or what we call charFX or character final…they would basically take the end animation product then fine tune the resulting geometry with deformers or sculpts…we did this alot on the new spongebob film thats not out yet :slight_smile:

an easy(or maybe not so…) way to do this yourself:

-animate and dont worry about stuff.
-then when you whave what you want make a copy of that mesh.
-sculpt that mesh into the shape that you need
-plug back into your original mesh with blendshape.
-animate the blendshape.

This can be easy or super difficult and technical depending on the rig.

#3

That all makes sense and helps tremendously. Thanks. I have a better idea of how to approach the project. Much appreciated!