Animation Questions

Hi Everyone, I’ve been testing out Ragdoll and it has been amazing.

Im in the process of trying to figure out how to animate with it and would like to ask for help regarding this short clip.

  • What would be the best way in animating a scene like this? I currently just posed the first frame with Live Mode, then put a Pin on the Tentacles on the tree.

  • I animated the main root control roughly to simulate swinging on the tree and jumping. The root Joint has a Kinematic Behavior.

  • When it jumps - I want it to curl inwards - but it’s quite hard to pose when you can’t tweak it in real time. Then I want it to curl inwards just before it reaches the branch and then turn on the Pin constraint again so the hands attach to the tree.

  • It’s also quite hard to get the proper physics/gravity setting. Each time it’s either looks zero gravity or very heavy and I see the arms detach.

It’s been amazing to see the fast feedback of the physics however it’s unpredictable specially with posing.
How can I animate and pose on certain frames so I have control on the overall motion?

Thanks and I’m looking for learn and integrate it more in my workflow.

If you were to hang off of this tree, how would you go about swinging? My guess is you would

  1. Curl your fingers to stay attached to the tree
  2. Bring your knees up towards your chest to swing forwards
  3. Bring your knees down and your feet towards your back to swing backwards

And as you do (2) and (3) you’d swing higher and higher. At some point, you’d bring your knees up real fast so as to create a jump. At this point, you can let go of your fingers to perform a jump off the branch.

In real life, it’d be challenging to do this unless you are a gymnast. But in Maya, you can control the amount of muscles your character has so it may yet be possible.

You may or may not need any pin constraints for this, I would start without. And only use them when you need to cheat. Your air density seems much too high in your example, I would load the character again and stick with the default values as a starting point.