hi welcome to gaskada in this tutorial
I'm going to introduce you to the
software interface and help you make
your very first animation
so you've downloaded and installed
Cascada and the first thing you see is a
startup window
you can access this window at any time
by pressing the home icon
in the samples tab you can find a set of
scenes with characters and animations
let's open this one for example
you can see the character from the scene
displayed in the viewport now let's take
a closer look shall we
to navigate The View hold alt and left
click to rotate the camera
pole dolls and right click to zoom in
and zoom out
[Music]
old alt and middle Mouse button to move
the camera
as a rule scenes can take a lot of
objects and rig elements and if we
choose to display all these objects all
at once in the viewport that'll make the
scenes cluttered and difficult to work
with to avoid that there's a set of
display modes that you can choose from
each mode displays and gives you access
to a specific set of scene elements in
The View mode for example we can only
see the character's mesh so this view is
very useful to check and play back your
animation
but to start our work we shall switch to
Auto posing mode
Auto posing is an AI assisted tool which
predicts the position of the rest of the
body from the given key points
the controllers for this mode look as a
set of connected points
click the blue point at the character's
foot to move it use translate
manipulator you can select it from the
tool panel or simply press w
in our case it already activated
left click and hold the Green Arrow and
pull the character's leg up
notice how much the whole pose has
changed the character lifted his arms
and slightly shifted the center of Mass
to the leg which remained on the ground
if the pose resets every time you change
it that means the current frame doesn't
have a key on it for now just make sure
to stay on frame 0.
let's now try to move the legs sideways
dragging the square icon allows you to
move the object along the corresponding
planes
notice how the whole body rotates as you
move the leg around this happens because
the position of all inactive green
points is calculated automatically in
our case the only active blue points are
at the feet so autoposing is using them
to predict the position of the rest of
the body
now select the direction controller at
the character's chest and move it around
notice how the points of the direction
controller has turned blue which means
it's now activated
now try moving the leg again along the
same plane the character no longer turns
around because we have specified its
direction and now also posing is taking
it into account
to control the position and the rotation
of the body use the points that the
pelvis and the neck
by activating the pelvis points I can
move the character's body
and I can lean the character moving the
points at the neck
now both the pelvis and the neck points
are active now which means that will no
longer have influence on each other
so if I want to move the whole body now
I will have to move both
press and hold shift to select multiple
points by clicking on them and click
again to deselect any
now having both of these points selected
it can now move the whole body
and of course you can select multiple
points in the scene by dragging a box
around them left click and hold the
mouse button to make a selection note
that in the auto poser mode only the
active Blue Points will be selected
to deactivate the controller select the
Blue Points you wish to deactivate and
click this button
or press shift Z
the deactivated points will likely to
instantly change its position because
now it is being determined by the auto
posing the less active points there are
in the scene the more Freedom Auto
posing has
for example it can automatically place
the food on the ground when it gets
close to it
same way Auto posing can place the foot
on the toe
but if you activate all the points of
the foot this will no longer happen
however this way you can control its
direction
there is another way to quickly select
multiple points
double-click the point of the foot to
select all the points attached to it
select the rotate manipulator to rotate
the foot along one of its axes
notice how the rotation of the foot
influences the position of the knee
but you can always activate the knee
points to lock its position
and once activated neither the rotation
of the food nor pelvis will change its
position
but as soon as you need the knee to be
positioned automatically again just
simply deactivate its point
try to be strategic with your points
activate them only when you need them
here for instance I can move the main
point of the foot to raise it on its toe
automatically and then select the rest
of the points and rotate them
and here I want to tell you about the
local and Global manipulator modes
switch to translate manipulator and
check the direction of the arrows
right now they are aligned to the
coordinate system of the software this
is called Global manipulator mode
this mode is useful to move objects
along the coordinates of the scene say
moving the foes along the floor but when
you switch to the local mode the
direction of the arrows corresponds the
orientation of the selected object in
this case it means the arrow points at
the same direction as the toe of the
foot you can rotate the foot in the
local mode as well
and these are pretty much all the things
you need to know to set a pose now let's
make a short animation shall we
animation pretty much consists of a
sequence of poses on different frames
you can see all the frames of the
animation on the timeline
the frames which contain poses that you
said are called keyframes and are
displayed blue on the timeline
now the only keyframe we have is on
frame zero
let's set the first pose for our
animation on this Frame
deactivate the points and return the
pose to its initial state
or you can simply press Ctrl Z to undo
the changes
for our pose we'll first need to
activate the direction controller of the
head to get the character to look
forward
now let's move right foot forward
and then adjust the rotation of the body
using the direction controller of the
chest and that should be it for the
starting pose of our animation to make
our next pose we'd first have to create
a new key go to frame 20 and click this
button to create one or simply press f
now we need to change the pose in the
new key
I'll suggest we just mirror it
to do that double-click the pelvis
points of the character to select all
the points
go to mirror tool and select the mirror
plane along which you want the mirroring
to happen make sure that mirror pelvis
position is turned off and click mirror
on current frame
now we have two keyframes with different
poses in them you can quickly switch
between them by holding shift and
pressing a or D
let's now make our animation return to
our first pose in the end
this will allow us to make a looping
animation
select the key on frame 0 hold shift and
middle Mouse button and drag the key to
frame 40. and now we have successfully
copied the first key
currently there are no poses in between
the frames so the poses switch abruptly
now select all the frames of our
animation left click and drag a box
along the timeline then expand the
interpolations box and select bezier
clamped
what we've done here is that we use
interpolation to calculate the poses in
between the frames
however let's make it so that the
character would stand still for some
time before changing the pose
to do that go to frame 0 and copy that
key to frame 10.
this way we created an interval between
two identical poses so our character
would not move on that interval
let's make another interval like that
after the character changes the pose
to do that simply copy frame 20 to frame
30. and now we have all the keys that we
need for our animation
click this button to limit the timeline
to the animation range
and press play to watch it
now let's use autophysics to make this
animation much more exciting
click the autophysics button to display
the physics assistant
it shows you what your animation will
look like once various physical
algorithms are applied to it
these algorithms are displayed on the
physics settings tab on the right
currently physics character is the only
thing applied
so what autophysics did was that he
determined on which frames the character
has fulcrum points and on which it
doesn't and adjusted the transition
between the poses by adding little jumps
and setups for them
you can change the animation timings
which will have an impact on the end
result
for example select the key on frame 10
and press Plus on your keyboard to add
more frames after it
the more frames there are between the
keys the longer this animation would
take
and the longer the character has to stay
airborne during the jump the higher the
jump will have to be
same way you can remove the frames from
the interval by pressing the minus key
on your keyboard and thus reduce the
animation time
it can also change the timings by moving
the keys along the timeline to do that
select the key and hold the middle Mouse
button to drag it
same as copying but without holding
shift
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now let's add another physics algorithm
to our animation secondary motion
when you first enable it nothing changes
in the animation that's because you have
to set which body parts will be affected
by the secondary motion and to what
extent
select all the points of the arms of the
character and all the frames of the
animation
and open the second remotion tab
you can find four values there that you
can switch to achieve different results
for the secondary motion
make sure that this button is on and
glows red
when it's on it means that the changes
that you make apply to the whole
selected interval instead of just a
single frame
now let's change the local blending
value
the lower the value is the greater
effect the secondary motion will have
let's set it to 20 and see what happens
on the physics assistant you can clearly
see the secondary motion affects the
animation but far too much
you can increase the local Blended value
but instead you can increase damping
and as the name suggests it dampens the
amplitude
so let's set the damping value to 50.
and as you can see the arms now are just
slightly loose
but be free to try various settings to
see which ones work best for your
particular animation
but now because we use secondary motion
the poses at the beginning and at the
end of the animation no longer match
to make them match again you can go to
the very last frame of the animation and
set the local blending value back to a
hundred
thus its value will grow on the last
interval until it matches the initial
pose
and now the poses in the both keyframes
will be almost identical again
now let's snap our animation to the
physics result
to do so just click snap to Auto physics
button
since we've been using secondary motion
we get this warning click yes
once the secondary motion is applied the
setting for it will be disabled
otherwise new secondary motion will be
layered on top of the animation that
already has one so each time the facts
will increase and we don't need that
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and now the animation from the physics
assistant has been transferred to our
character
notice how the frames between the keys
have turned green that means the
interpolation is now fixed fixed
interpolation means that the animation
is baked into every frame so changing
poses in the keyframes will no longer
have any effect on the intervals now if
you want to change the poses in the
keyframes you will have to set a
different kind of interpolation for the
intervals first then once the change is
done you can once again snap the
animation to autophysics
but our animation is pretty much done
here
now we can export it to fbx or to a
video file
so good luck and thanks for watching