Box Lift Animation by Annabella Espiritu

Here is some great 3D animation in Maya by Escape Studios' animation student Annabella Espiritu.  Animating weight is an especially challenging task for junior animators; unlike stop-motion animation, our character rigs have no intrinsic weight, so the weight must be simulated.  To see more great work created by our students, check out our Animation & VFX YouTube Channel. 

Animate a Weight Shift with Monty

Monty Weight Shift

We've uploaded a new tutorial to our Vimeo Tutorial Channel - How to Animate a weight shift using the free character rig "Monty", which you can download from Creative Crash.   

One of the hardest things to achieve in 3D animation is the creation a sense of weight. Weight is hard to simulate because our characters are just pixels - they have no intrinsic weight, so we have to create the illusion of weight from scratch.  

This tutorial shows how to transfer weight so that the character does not appear floaty or weightless.

How to Animate Weight - The Box Lift

Weight lift from the Animator's Survival Kit

One of the hardest things to achieve in 3D animation is the creation of a sense of weight. Weight is hard to simulate because our characters are just pixels - they have no intrinsic weight, so we have to create it from nothing. 

One of the more tricky exercises our students have to tackle is to animate a character lifting a heavy object, such as a box. The box is just a bunch of pixels - it has no weight. So the challenge is to make it appear heavy.

To get started, take a look at the thumbnail sketches on the left, taken from the book we recommend all our students buy - The Animator's Survival Kit. 

The thumbnails show how important it is for the character to get their feet right underneath the object they are going to lift.  That way, the weight of the object falls directly over the character's heels - and the object feels heavy. 

Weight Animation Tutorial with "Heavy"

We've uploaded a new animation tutorial to our growing Vimeo Tutorial Channel, showing how to animate a character lifting a heavy object.

The purpose of the tutorial is to show students how to create the illusion of weight. With CG animation, we get nothing for free, and it is easy for animation to feel floaty and weightless.

"Flour Sack Suicide" Tutorial at Vimeo

We've uploaded a new tutorial series to our growing Vimeo Tutorial Channel, showing how to animate a leaping flour sack.

The purpose of the exercise is to learn how to simulate weight, and create an entertaining performance with a simple, basic Maya rig. You can find the flour sack video tutorial here.