by fedefuso
Hey all, I wrote this in the comments of one of my poses, and figured it might help some people out here. Basically I've worked out a pretty simple method to animate an interactive pose which some of you may find helpful. The following s based on a simple hip to hip thrust, timed to my own personal style. Those of you who might prefer shorter, quicker motions, or on the flip side, longer, more expressive ones, will need to shift the keys around a bit to suit your preference, though you can still use mine as a base.
1. At the 1st bar of the timeline, so the extreme left, you pose the extreme of the withdrawal, so the farthest the guy will have pulled out. Make sure to connect the penis to vag/ass/whatever before you do this. Connect whatever hands to hips and that now as well, if you are certain of where you want them (often I'll just ignore the hands initially, then decide where to place them after the extremes of the movement have been mapped out)
Note: Make sure all characters have their shoes off, so that you can be sure their feet stay on the ground no matter what they're wearing.
2. You copy paste all keys from the 1st bar, to the 4th bar on the time line (that's just a good speed to me, and doesn't get TOO fast on the highest setting). If you want a more gentle action, go to maybe the 5th or 6th, or closer for a more aggressive movement (your preference). Keep in mind that you don't need a second or third thrust, only repeat it if you want to vary the action.
Note: Every time you make a change to the very first keyframe, get into the habit of copy/pasting it over the last, these frames must stay identical to avoid jumps of movement when the loop repeats. Also copy them to the first and last frame of all four loops, as they all need to source from this starting pose. Wait till later to add the other loops though, as you want to be able to repeatedly play the penetration animation in order to adjust speed, and you don't want to be waiting for the damn thing to play through all four bars before starting again.
3. You go to the 2nd bar on the timeline, and pull her hip (or whatever the dominant IK is) back, (this will pull his back as well) then you pull his forward, and into her. This emulates the effort he makes to begin the push. When throwing a ball, you gotta wind back first, its simple physics, and the same in this case.
4. Then on the 3nd bar of the timeline you pull her hip (in turn his as well) forward to the extreme point of the action, so the farthest point forward they both will go.
5. Play the animation through a couple of times to fix the timing. The idea being the less space between the 1st and 2nd keyframes, the faster, and harder the impact, and the more distance they travel together between the 2nd and 3rd keys, the more he's pushing her forward with the thrust (the more he's giving it to her)
6. That's the core of the animation (the trunk of the tree) and once you get the timing right of that, then you start adding all the reactive movements, the back arches and head movements that emulate the momentum of the thrust. Problem is, is that this animation tool is pretty selective on which ones it plays, and I've gone and added heaps of precise hip rotations, and back arches, and head bobs, and all of this weight and motion to her, only to find they just don't even get played, and she looks like she's made of wood. That's something these guys at Thrixxx need to fix (And don't worry Thrixxx, I know that's easier said than done, I work in the industry… it can still be done though).
Note: Keep in mind, that a lot of the tertiary motions the characters will make will actually come from the normal loop, not the penetration loop, and this will take a lot of trial and error to figure out (I still haven't fully gotten it myself). A tool this system needs is a proper review feature, that plays the interaction as it will be in-game, as continually heading out of the editor to start up a new game, just to find that you've moved the wrong joint, is a right pain in the ass.
7. Anyway, finally, once that's done, you start adding a general anim for the orgasim, cooldown, and normal loops, on all parts EXCEPT the hips, or whatever core joints are not used in the penetration loop, so things like heads, hands… stuff like that.
8. Switch to interactive, and select the start and end frames for each loop. Make sure to Left click on the desired frame first, as I get the sneaking suspicion it doesn't always register it, and like 40% of the time you start it up in game and it just plays through all the anims anyway… I think this is a bug.
Get that practice down pat, and you can hammer a pose out in an hour. For reference, grab one of mine, like this one:
http://www.gamerotica.com/share/view/pose/62587-take-it
and just take a look at how I've laid out the keys. Drag the timeslider across them and see which keys I've set to what joints, and when I've set them. Some of you will be surprised to see how little I actually need to animate in order to get a lot of motion.
Cool, good luck with it, and please, by all means, edit and alter all my poses, the more the merrier.