Today I worked on adding a path that the Spider-man model will follow in the scene and having the model snap to the path.
To start adding in the path I first pressed 'SHIFT+A' and added in a Bezier curve into my scene.
I then scaled up the curve and rotated it to follow the path I wanted.
Once rotating it straight so that it follows the downward path of the street I then went into Edit mode by pressing TAB and by selecting the individual points of the curve I rotated it and moved those individual points to create different levels of height to the curve that the model will follow.
Once I got the end of the curve which is the point selected in the screenshot and had made all the changes to the curve beforehand, I needed the curve to be longer for the final parts of the animation, and so to do this I selected the end part of the curve and then pressed 'E' to extrude the path and make it longer and then rotated and moved the extra point the way I needed it.
I then started on the next portion which is to have the model be connected to the path so that when I animate it, it follows the path. I first started by importing in my model with its rig.
I then went into pose mode for the rig and selected the main hip control which is also the center of the model. I then pressed 'SHIFT+S' to open the cursor wheel which moves the 3D cursor to a location. I then chose the 'move cursor to selected' option.
I then went back into Object Mode and pressed "SHIFT+A' and went to the 'empty' options and brought in a Plain Axis. By moving the 3D cursor to the center of the model before it made it so when I brought in the Plain axis it came in at the center of the model. The reason why I need the Plain axis is that in Blender there is a problem where when moving the character through a path, the character becomes buggy and the rotation keyframes become augmented, and so to fix this adding in a Plain axis is beneficial because I can connect it to the model and add in the large body rotations to that which fixes the problem and so that none of the other animations I make to the body are affected.
To connect the Plain axis to the model I just select the Plain axis and rig and then press'CTRL+P' and select the option with 'keep transform'. Doing this connects the two and makes it so that any rotation or movement I make to the Plain axis will move the overall body with it.
I then selected the Plain axis, which I labeled 'Spider-man Empty', and then went to the Object Constraints panel on the side and added a new constraint. Because I wanted the empty to follow the path I chose the 'follow path' option when adding the constraint. I then went to the 'Target' setting in the constraint I added and chose the path I had made beforehand which I labeled with 'Spider-man Path'.
After doing this, the model automatically moved to the start of the path where I wanted it.
What I learned today:
Everything I did today was completely new to me because I had made animations of characters before where they moved but never of a character actually changing positions in a scene and going from point A to point B. So following the tutorial I'm using helped me a lot and taught me a lot about it and how I could possibly use it for later animations.
What I'm doing tomorrow:
Tomorrow I will start working on some of the basic rotation animations for the scene such as how Spider-man's body will be rotated when he swings around the building or when he does a backflip how much does he need to be turned upside down. Because I'm doing the just the main rotations I'm mostly only going to be using the Plain axis I made for the very purpose of the main body rotations. I will also be figuring out the length of the animation and setting an end in the frames.
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