Paddling a canoe

Made my first animation today, as the title states, paddling a canoe.

A lot trickier than I thought! My animation is in the paddle and it is attached to my right hand towards the bottom.

Here is my problem. How do I position the paddle where my left hand is better positioned on the top end of the paddle? I have it pretty close but would like a little more accuracy. Is there any way to step through the animation? It would make positioning much easier.

What program are you using to make this paddling animation? I think you can step through each frame with most programs. Are you adjusting the position of the paddle on your right hand?

Sorry, I have been unavailable for a couple of days.

I am using Avimator and the animation is just fine after a little tweaking.

My problem is attaching the canoe paddle properly to the AV. The animation is in the paddle and it is worn. Now comes the hard part. In order to position the paddle so both hands are in the proper position the animation has to be running.

I was very careful to keep both hands in the exact relationship with each other, i.e. left hand on the top of the paddle, right hand on the base. Trying to edit the rotations of the paddle in relationship with the hands seems to be next to impossible. When editing the position of the paddle, the animation is frozen as I would expect, and I position the paddle properly in relationship to the hands.

As I stated before, the hand positions are in perfect unision during the entire animation but it is like the right hand wants to twist around a bit during the stroke which moves the top of the paddle out of position of the left hand.

As I type this, I am wondering if it is because I have not rotated every part of the AV slightly and do not have complete control. I remember reading somewhere that each joint needs to be edited ever so slightly to avoid jerkiness. If that is true, and that is indeed my problem, does this need to be done for every frame or just one frame?

Just at one frame. The best place would be at the 2nd frame in avimator.

And as far as editing the paddle while it's in your hands. You pretty much have to set it one way and leave it at that. The paddle will stay in the position you last left it.

Two-handed animations are a complete pain to get right, but if it is Qavimator you are using, you can attach "props" to body parts, which will stay at a constant relative rotation to them and help you align the hands properly.

You probably will end up having to go through frame-by-frame and check, though. While things never quite end up looking as they did in Qavimator, the relative rotations should be, approximately. The tweening between your key frames, though, might well be causing odd issues.

Thanks guys, got it! The paddle is nice and steady in the hands, and oh yes, would it really be nice to be able to use a prop while doing the animation.

The hand movements were indeed because each joint had not been altered, as soon as I did that, my problems were solved.

Thanks again

Maybe the issue is more that attachments don't get attached to the surface of our avatars but the skeleton? (This is why some attachment places seem to "float" in relation to the AV...)

Although, my prim nails match perfectly, so maybe not now that I think about it more?

I don't know of any way to step through an animation, but you can play them in slow motion (in the Character menu of the debug Client menu) to see better.

It sounds like you are attaching it to the lower hand? Why not attach the paddle to the hand on the top, so when the rotation isn't perfect it will be less apparent? (And err on the inside?)

Are you making it just for yourself? Others will have totally different arm lengths, so not match at all unfortunately, which means maybe it doesn't have to be perfect to begin with?