hide random home http://www.newtek.com/3d/tutorial/character1/animating.html (Amiga Plus Extra No. 5/97, 05/1997)

Animating the Leg

  1. This will be a simple animation of the leg landing, compressing and then taking off. To begin this process, from Options Panel -> General Options Tab turn on Auto Key Adjust and Auto Key Create.
  2. Move the Current Frame Slider to frame 0.
  3. Select Null (2) and Move it to the bottom center of the screen. In this mode, it is not necessary to create a keyframe, anytime you move an item, a keyframe is automatically created for you.
  4. Select the Leg.lwo object and Move it to the upper right hand corner of the screen. The leg should be point towards the Null Objects.
    See Figure 7.
  5. Slide the Current Frame Slider to frame 10.
  6. Move the Leg.lwo object down towards the center of the screen until it the foot reaches the Null objects and the leg settles just slightly.
    See Figure 8.
  7. Slide the Current Frame Slider to frame 20.
  8. Move the Leg.lwo object towards the left hand side of the screen until the leg rotates forward and the knee compresses down. See Figure 9.
  9. Slide the Current Frame Slider to frame 30.
  10. Move the Leg.lwo object up to the upper left hand corner of the screen.
  11. Slide the Current Frame Slider back and forth in time to view the motion path. Pay attention to the rotation of the foot. Watch how both goals control the rotation of the foot so that it appears to plant firmly on the ground which allows the leg to rotate over the top of it. If it moves too much during the landing, you might have forced the leg down to far on frame 10 or 20. You can also help it by adjusting the Maximum Pitch Limit to a larger number.
    Note: At any time in the animation you can adjust the position of the foot by moving either Null Object.

Congratulations!, You have just used some of the higher end features of LightWave, including: Bones and Multiple Goal Inverse Kinematics. If you want to check out the final scene, it is located in the IK directory and is named IK_scn1.lws. There are a few more features that you might want to explore. Check out the Options section to learn Advanced Bone Options and MetaMation.