Cinema 4D Tutorial - Animate a Simple Character in C4D Part 2: Adding Secondary Animation Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

we can actually start animating our
character here and let's just go back to
the base post so we'll worry about
animating the face after we actually
know how to time it out with the
movements that will adhere so let's go
ahead and animate this guy so he's gonna
say about frame 10 he's gonna jump up
we'll just hit a keyframe in the Y move
this up
keyframe
then he'll fall back down again here's
our timeline here and move this down a
little bit so I want them to kind of
like float in the air a little bit so
like kind of hold in the air so I'm
gonna make this he's gonna shoot up so
I'm gonna get rid of this ease and just
make this a sharper curve he's gonna
jump up hang in the air there and then
he's gonna fall down again so I'm just
gonna duplicate that last keyframe and
have him sharply a fall down
look that's
it's actually
eze so we can actually see it and then
make this a sharp fall let's see how
that looks
we're gonna do a little bit of key
framing action here looks good but but
but let's make this 60 so we can
actually play through this a little bit
faster you'll see that just you know
animation wise you know he jump in the
air looks good he pauses and then he
falls and you see he just falls kind of
flat so what we want to do is add a
little bit of bounce just so it looks
more realistic and cartoonish so to
create some bounce it's very easy you
just have some bounce by just let's
duplicate this we are going to get some
more real estate here
go and I'm going to believe it's command
click nope
shift click yeah there we go that's the
ticket shift click and that'll break the
handles here and so now we have this
kind of bounce move this down now we
have a bounce point and let's add one
more bounce and we're gonna do a little
bit of decay as well so the arc the
second bounce going to be not so high
and it's going to be closer together
if that looks like so there's our little
bounce and decay
that looks good pretty good boink boink
cool so that's that so now what we can
actually do is this sushis on top we can
actually add some secondary animation
secondary animation is going to be the
major theme I'm gonna be hitting on as
far as animating this character because
so far we just have our primary
animation of of just our sushi group
just jumping up in the air and let's go
ahead and keyframe the sushi top here so
the salmon ear and let's keyframe this
as well so once it jumps up it's like if
you jump up and you have a hat and the
hat kind of jumps up and leaves the top
of your head
so let's keyframe this so I'll get a
keyframe of the Y so let's see where
exactly we would want the you shoulda
kind of fly up those go and move this up
a little bit so you can see what I'm
getting at here
so the sushi goes up and falls down
again let's you frame this and let's re
time this because right now everything's
not sinking to to well or as animation y
so just like we animus with the curves
on our main guy we're going to right
when it kind of crests to the top of the
jump where that's exactly when we're
gonna want the piece of sushi to kind of
fly off the top of his head as well so
let's go ahead and that looks a little
bit too fast
a lot of this is just like keyframing
and moving things around and playing
this back and forth and just seeing what
feels nice and fluid
let's see
move this a little bit so we want a
little bit of of tiny movement going up
as it continues up in the air just so it
doesn't look so boring
okay and then we can have this falling
back down again so we're gonna do the
exact same thing I'm gonna leave up the
curves for the position on our whole
entire thing as well just so I can match
things up and we'll have this fall down
and it's actually yeah let's just do
this
people keep keep that free keyframe and
we have it fall back down and then let's
do a bounce as well so what I like to do
with this is you'll notice that I'm not
matching up the keyframes I'm just
giving it like a frame offset just so it
looks more believable so once it falls
it's not gonna fall at the same time the
sushi part is not gonna fall at the same
time so again I'm gonna do a little bit
of bounce
yes
let's let's go frame-by-frame here go
wink but actually yeah let's actually
make sure that that falls fairly close
this move up a little bit more think and
then Boeing and let's do another little
bounce just very small and let's see how
this looks
uhh
flex point
a little bit more so a lot of this is
just really tweaking these keyframes
giving these keyframes some love and
attention because they deserve it
and really that's gonna be the
difference between you know good
animation and a great animation is just
tweaking these keyframes
cool so that's looking good
okay so let's let's hit play
and you'll see that while everything
looks good animation wise you know
everything looks really stiff so this is
where you know we got the secondary
animation of the piece of sushi kind of
flying up a little bit here but we can
go a little bit further with making this
whole object not feel so stiff and rigid
because it's a piece of it's a piece of
rice and it's a sushi and you know sushi
is not stiff if you eat stiff sushi
that's a problem you should probably put
that back you're eating the plastic
window version of it so let's go ahead
let's save this really quick we don't
lose anything
and one and let's let's add more
secondary animation with deformers to
make this a little less stiff so the one
thing I really love to use with
character animation and just anything to
give it more life is squash and stretch
and cinema4d has a really awesome squash
and stretch to former I'm just gonna
make this underneath the main null of
the salmon guy here just so it's gonna
apply to everything let's get a
interactive render region and let's hide
but but the melt so I don't want to see
the fall offs and now go ahead and
hopefully you guys can see but if i zoom
in here you can see this little purple
if I move this over you can see a little
purple line with two dashes and this is
basically representing the fall-off on
where if I go to my squash and stretch
here
and see you can adjust the top the
center and the bottom and here's the
factor so here is my squash and stretch
in a fighh this looks a little bit like
you know toad from Super Mario but you
can see what's going on is we got this
really nice squash and stretch but the
thing is is that we want it to kind of
squash like he's gonna get squished down
from the bottom like you're kind of
cowering a little bit and kind of
getting momentum and then then explode
up as he gets really surprised and pops
up in the air so you can see that we're
really not squashing to the ground but
what I actually like to do is I'm gonna
leave the factor at about 115 here and
you can see you can adjust the expand of
how much that squash and stretch really
goes vertically here just bring that to
100 again but but and what I'm gonna do
is bring the bottom all the way up and
I'm gonna move this down so I want the
bottom to be right down there and if the
center as is and I'm gonna need to
readjust the top here and actually what
I want to do is I don't want to squash
the sushi since that's gonna be its own
separate thing
so you'll notice it's in our same
hierarchy here in what I what we can do
to exclude that salmon from being
squashed from the squash and stretch is
by going and using a tag that I don't
know if you've even used or looked at
before but cinema 4d tags stop and what
we're gonna do is right now
when we apply this we can adjust this to
stop generators or stop deformers and if
I stop deformers what that's gonna do is
it's gonna stop the squash and stretch
from deforming that sushi or whatever
you apply your stop tag to so this is
like a nice little way of if you have a
bunch of deformers and stuff and you
have an object in that hierarchy that
you don't want to be affected by the
former at all
use this stop tag the thing to know is
that it's gonna stop anything in the
same level of hierarchy but it won't
stop any thing below it so you can see
that my Bend is still applied that's all
good
one thing I am gonna need to do is since
we're doing a lot of deformations and
stuff and I have a texture of this mouth
here you'll notice that it's not
deforming with the geometry our little
mouth and why that is is I actually need
to first kind of stick this texture to
that geometry and to do that I'm gonna
go to cinema 4d tags go to stick texture
and I'm gonna record it and that'll
stick that texture to that UV of that
undeformed geometry so now when I do the
squash and stretch you'll see that now
that mouth texture is now kind of
deforming along with our with our
geometry there so stick texture actually
I think I accidentally applied that to
our salmon don't need that
but-but-but so stop tag very handy so
now our sushi is not being deformed by
the squash and stretch but our rice is
so now we have our little rice ball and
we have really nice squash and stretch
so let's go ahead and keyframe this to
match it up what you match this up
default is 100 so let's see he gets
really surprised here so break before he
jumps so he jumps at frame 10 right
before it let's hit a keyframe for the
factor and then have him squash a little
bit
those wash and then we'll have him
stretch a little bit up here
a 125 it looks good you can see how that
kind of that squash and stretch really
adds a lot
that nice little secondary animation
good
keyframe our squash and stretch so
here's our squash and stretch right here
and we'll adjust these keyframes
Oh
and what kinda have this enemy back down
to zero at some point
falls down
in this connects
again
just a little bit here maybe at least
loses a little bit of squash and then
it's squashy again so this is let's call
this it's like both these key frames
this can be 110 so just a slight amount
of squash as he's still in the air and
then as he falls again that that
friction that momentum is going to make
them squash further
- he
it's the ground and with that collision
he's gonna need to scuff wash
but when he hits the ground
see here just
James
gosh
right when he hits that's when the
school
gonna happen and then he'll stretch a
little bit as the as he bounces
let's give it just a little bit of
stretch again so let's again break our
tangent by holding the shift key
and then me
a little bit of squash maybe not so 90%
is like 10% squash so let's do 95 so
just a very subtle amount there
wash and then squash a little bit there
and then he can just go back to 100% so
that's no Squasher stretch and let's
let's see how that looks let's move it
Keefe timeline down
cool so I think we can do a little
fine-tuning with the squash here
especially this part I feel like
maybe duplicate this keyframe
so just like we're holding in the air
we're gonna hold that stretch a little
bit more here
just like
at
a little bit over more their core
I can probably get let's get rid of that
keyframe
oh alright I think that looks good I can
tweet this forever and really fine-tune
this but that's not the whole point so
adding our squash and stretch let's just
for comparison's sake let's this is with
squash and stretch see how like squishy
our sushi ball looks right and this is
without and just see how the difference
of just adding a little bit of squash
and stretch really adds a lot to our
character here so right now our little
sushi ball like the head looks really
good in squishy but the salmon piece is
actually looking kinda cruddy it's still
stiff so we're actually going to use a
different deform ER to breathe a little
bit more life into this by using some
secondary animation and let's just hide
the squash and stretch the view here and
the deform we're gonna use for this is
one of my favorites sure you can guess
which one it is if you've watched my
stuff before I am going to use a you go
to former so we're gonna make this
salmon nice in jiggly so what I'm gonna
do is I'll jiggle it after the bend so
the bends just kind of creating a nice
little arc on our sushi so it looks like
it's kind of resting on the rice ball
there and we're gonna get jiggly now so
right away by applying that jiggle and
we have the jump you can see now it's
just applying like a delay effector kind
of springy bouncy thing to the entirety
of let's see if this makes any
difference if it happens before or after
yeah
leave it like that for now
but you'll see that we need to do some
adjustments cuz right now it's just
adding some like delay springy to the
whole entire sushi object so what we can
do now to make this more realistic and
make our piece of sushi look a little
bit floppy is by using some fall-off so
right now it's just applying jiggle to
our whole entire object we can actually
define where we want our jig will be
applied by using a fall-off so I'm gonna
use box fall-off and let's go into our
all of our views here and we'll just
adjust the fall-off - basically we want
to apply jiggle to just the end pieces
that are kind of falling off the little
ball of rice there but let's see
see how that looks so let's hit play
we're actually doing the opposite
we actually have just the inside of our
sushi having that kind of floppiness and
then the outside is kind of pinned so
we're just gonna simply invert this
invert there we go and now you'll see
that we're kind of by using that box
fall off we're controlling and
constraining where that jiggle deformers
happens so now go to our full view here
now we have this really fun
floppy piece of sushi and again we can
adjust this just by simply adjusting the
fall-off again so if that's too much or
too little whatever you want to do let's
let's increase the timeline here so now
we got some jiggly sushi and again you
can always go and adjust like the
stiffness the drag so you can have this
really kind of get a lot more friction
air friction and stuff like that one
thing I really like to do so you'll
notice that I had my bend to former here
to kind of have it conform with the
shape of the the rice ball here another
cool thing you can do is actually just
have gravity affect the rice so almost
like it's or the sushi piece so I can
just see if I bring in really negative
number you can see how it really flops
to the side there due to the gravity so
it's almost like adding so it's like
using dynamics or your particle forces
again you can use particle forces to
control the jiggle Reformer as well but
it's got this built-in gravity so you
can already have stuff kind of flopping
down and stuff like that so you can play
with that a little bit but one thing to
note is if you do have gravity you'll
see that there's like a little glitch
right at the top of my animation so
right there that little twitch so that's
due to the gravity so if you do want
gravity you
have to keyframe and on and off at the
end of the animation at the start just
so you don't have that glitch let's go
ahead and just do that really quick so
at the end here we'll just get rid of
the gravity and then at the start wall
have no gravity at all and then that
should get rid of our little glitch so
you have just that little bit
ah
of time where
the gravity kind
takes effect and then fades away as this
loop so let's
go into our timeline
let's make this
90 frames or let's do 100
cool so we basically have all of our
animation set up as far as movement of
our sushi but now we need to keyframe
all those facial movements that we
created with our pose morph right so
let's let's save this again and so
here's all of our pose morph face morphs
let's first cache the let's cache the
jiggle just so that's nice and baked and
we don't have to worry about that kind
of causing any issues or anything like
that so there we go now we can just
scroll through here without having any
weird jiggle deform oddities don't want
jiggle oddities I'm not sure if you bend
before you jiggle or jiggle before you
bend feels like legally it's that dance
move I don't know we'll just jiggle
before we Bend I guess for right now and
hopefully that is okay let's see
I don't know I don't know
well jiggle before we bend
and hopefully don't pull something okay
so let's go into our proposed morph and
we'll just so we're gonna have him get
surprised right so we're gonna go to our
animates and now we can start animating
this stuff and right away you'll know
that all of our sliders are set to 100
if we just reset sliders that will just
bring us back to our base pose and now
we can start animating the strengths of
our poses and having some fun and I want
to make sure
why the mouth is not updating even
though we have the animate preview on
that should be be updating in there
all right
let's go into
and the surprised
keyframe that so right before he jumps
you get surprised so let's bet a
keyframe for the surprise pose and crank
that up to 100
there we go
let's see how that looks
wha
and let's actually go in I think that he
goes to that position a little bit fast
let's uh whoops let's just adjust this
surprise strength and again let's adjust
these furs
it's a sharper curve here in the nice
part about the jaw go to former or not
that you go to former mixing up the
things that I love in cinema 4d the pose
morph is we can go above 100% and what I
mean by that is in the slider you can
actually push it further and what it
will do is kind of continue on whatever
moves that you were adjusting in the
pose morph so the scale of the eyes it's
just going to continue on the more you
go above 100% and it's also going to
continue making that mouth smaller which
you can't see right now
um so let's go ahead
and let's do a little overshoot since we
have the ability to go above a hundred
percent so we have just a little bit of
overshoot going on right here
so maybe what that's like 115 or
something like that just so we can have
a little bit of overshoot with the
facial movement
it has like a little bounce it's pretty
subtle but I like it we get surprised
then he can go back to his typical his
normal face
so we'll just turn down the strength of
our surprise face
and again we can do some
wait bit of overshoot
with that as well when he goes back to
his normal faith
you
move this over so he goes back to his
normal face after it
actually you know what let's not have
him do his normal face until way later
on though the nice another nice thing
about so we'll have him go to his normal
face towards the end of the animation
what I want to do is make some blinking
so kind of like he just was surprised
and he's like what the crap and he
blinks a little bit and then like kind
of snaps back to like what the heck was
that and then he's like that's all good
I'm still happy I'm a piece of sushi so
again we'll go and see we made our
little blink thing here and the nice
thing about the pose morph is you're
only gonna edit things that you're only
gonna edit objects that are stored in
each morph
so in this blink morth the only thing
that we're we adjusted is the eyes so
you'll notice that the mouth since we
didn't adjust the whoops since we didn't
adjust the mouth at all we are just
adjusting the eyes so that's perfect
because he can keep his little oh face
and we can just make him blink let's go
ahead and keyframe some blinky blinky
Ness
so if you think about how you blink like
you blink very quickly and then if
there's any kind of like ease it's
probably after your blink like when your
eyes open
so the blink to close your eyes is very
fast that will just go one keyframe over
let's go to our timeline here let's just
move move this guy up so we get a little
bit more real estate here so here is our
blink so the blinks very quick and then
we'll go back to 0% strength on the
blink you'll see if I hit play here now
the blinks really fast and then he has a
little bit of ease
as he kind of snaps back
so just very subtle like blink and
little make them blink twice so we'll
just take those keyframes duplicate them
so he'll just do a double blink like
what the what and let's make sure these
keyframes here
and sharp
get rid of the right values and all that
stuff by just going and getting at 0%
that'll just smooth out those a keyframe
those handles there and I can hit shift
and make that a really sharp curve let's
do the blink blink like what was that
and he's like whatever whatevs
it's all good y'all and then he gets the
happy face again and then he's then we
just make this a little animated gif
loop right and that's basically it
ah but uh you can see our jiggles kind
of the gravity is kind of causing some
issues so you know what let's just get
rid of gravity go away
I didn't even like the movie gravity get
out of here
okay so we have our
jiggle on the salmon we have our squash
and stretch two former on the rice ball
adding some my squash and stretch we
have the pose morph morphing our facial
features and making him blink and and
adjusting all that stuff we have the
spline with a spline spline shader
animating the mouth and applying our
mouth as a texture on our little sushi
guy and that's that's basically it so
you know a lot of little tips and tricks
like this very simple character
animation and cinema 4d but you know and
I didn't even dig into a lot of
deformers you can use again I used the
melt áformer to get that kind of cheeky
little eye thing going on but I mean
think about all the different deformers
we have in here I didn't even use the
bend or bulge or any of this kind of
stuff or twist like you can add all this
kind of stuff to do some really fun
character animations so if you wanted
him instead of jumping straight up in
the air you can have him kind of twist
around or something like that I don't
know you know have some fun with it
but yeah so let's let's just for the
sake of just seeing how much you're the
power of secondary animation is - you
know - little animations like this let's
just okay what just with another
comparison with squash and stretch on
and jiggle on and then it off so jiggle
to former off squash and stretch off you
can just see how stiff this looks but
then just adding the jiggle to former
back and the squash and stretch you know
just add so much more character so much
more fun movements interesting movements
to your character or just any kind of
object you're animating in cinema 4d so
the next time you animate a character
have some fun with it remember the
remember that formers remember the pose
morph and just remember how powerful the
the
the power of secondary animation is in
animation in general so if you have any
questions be sure to hit hit me in the
comments section and and as always if
you guys make anything I want to see it
I love seeing what you guys come up with
when you when you finish my tutorial so
post it on Twitter let me know I want to
see it show me and I'll see you guys the
next tutorial thanks so much for
watching and that's it bye bye bye