Go
to the side view. Select the Right Hand Control object and click
into Muscle mode in the Action window. You should now see the control
points of your "Wave" spline highlighted. Select the middle point
and move it slightly up. Select the back point and move it slightly
down. Move both the middle and back point in a little towards the palm,
to create some bend in the fingers.
You should see
that the bones of the hand follow the movement of the spline (you may need
to press the space-bar to refresh the screen before this becomes apparent).
However, the front two digits may be too straight. You can adjust
this by moving the position of the CPs in the Tilt Control object forward.
Now the hand is
in a substantially more relaxed position. This is a good thing for
the beginning of our animation. Next we will close the hand in a
relaxed fist. Use the frame bar to go to frame 15. Go to the
Front view. Use the Group tool to select all of the points
of the wave-spline, and move them down and in toward the palm. Click
'R' to bring up the Rotate tool, and rotate the spline 45 degrees counter-clockwise.
You may find that
the fingers stiffen up again, because the Tilt Control has not been moved.
You can adjust it slightly to control the amount of tension in the fingers.
Go to frame 30.
Rotate the spline another 45 degrees clockwise. Click 'R' to deactivate
the Rotate tool, and move the wave-spline in to the palm, and slightly
up. Adjust the Tilt Control as necessary.
The making of a fist is almost always accompanied by a slight tilt of
the wrist (because of the movement of the tendons). Click in the
PWS on the DojoBot model. Change to Skeletal mode, to see the DojoBot's
bones. Click on the Right Hand Target bone, and rotate it slightly
clockwise.
Note that, since the Right Hand Control bone is constrained to follow
the movement of DojoBot's hand, the fingers move smoothly with the hand's
rotation.
Now let's just return the hand to its original position without the
in-between frame, to see what happens, shall we?
Go to frame 60.
Rotate the Hand Target back to its original position. Click
on the Right Hand Control action object. Enter Muscle mode.
Select the spline, and move it back out to its original position.
Do likewise with the Tilt Control.
Scrubbing through
the animation, you should notice that the hand opens in a much more tight
manner than it closes. This is just a fraction of the types of control
that you can easily achieve with the setup that you've created. Also,
you may be imagining how much better this movement would look with some
Slow-in/Slow-out applied. However, I've already written rather too
long a tutorial: more detail will be described in the forthcoming
Refine level of this tutorial.
You have completed the Dabble level of the Hand Position tutorial.
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