CAT Tutorials

Unless stated otherwise these different animations were created following a series of online tutorials, the aim of doing them was to learn the basics of how to use the Character Animation Tool-kit.

The first part of this was following the tutorial, in figure mode I created a CAT base human and fitted it to the provided mesh.

In class, not from on-line tutorial, we then altered the animation to make it look more natural and heroic. The walk looks good, however with some editing the mesh could look as though it was fitted much better.

Here I created a CAT from scratch and fitted it to a provided beast mesh. This was not too difficult and I feel it went well. In animation I remember there was not much wrong.

The purpose of this one was to use adjustment layers to make the head less bobby and to ground the feet so they weren't floating above the CAT, as well as a few other adjustments.

This tutorial took you through how to use Absolute layers. The red and blue on the character model represent 2 absolute layers each with different animations on them, this can be used to fine tune movement on a character, or to separate movement as seen here.

Here a ground plane and footsteps were used to make the character follow the pattern on the ground plan. The walk and run animations look un-natural, though I did achieve what I set out to do.

This was done in class, not from an on-line tutorial. We put 3 different CAT basics into a scene, I added walk animations to each and adjusted the way there were walking to make it look more natural. I then created a series of footsteps for each one. I created a line which I linked a dummy to, which I linked the CAT basic to. This created a walk animation following footsteps in a pattern. I then added a ground plan and made the footsteps follow it. I also added a teapot for when they do a strange dance at the end, this is something I could improve on, I found the key-frames and animation too limiting, and found it difficult to extend the time scale without instead having them dance at the end, or redoing most of it.

I feel I could have done some of these tutorials better, such as in places where the animation is odd or isn't smooth, however I am happy with it for a first attempt at using CAT, especially since I didn't spend long on each.