Animating Crate Opening
Other things that I have animated (such as the ball and the moped handle) I have not used bones. Today I am trying to create my first animation with bones that will be a crate opening by the hinges.
I followed a tutorial online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoAhrvjm4gM
However this tutorial was made for an older version of Maya and it got confusing trying to find the tools that the tutorial was talking about (some had moved and some had changed completely).
Using this tutorial I created a bone, however I easily got lost with the tutorial and I found the animation didn't work.
I researched how to fix this and I found that I need to place the bones and joints differently. I will delete the bones and joints I currently have and replace them with bones and going going along the side and top of the box where the hinges are - as this is what I want to move.
I deleted those bones and placed them along the top of the crate instead. This worked much better.
This is a reference similar to what I wanted to create: main difference is that I want mine to be more cube than cuboid shaped.
Here is a video of my crate opening animation.
I am happy with how this turned out. I gave the box hinges and tried to make the box open on them. As well as the basic open and close animation, I made the lid move a little bit further back like it is moving on its hinges. Looking at the movement before and after the main movement of the animation makes the animation feel more 'alive', and I hope that comes across in this animation.
If I was making it again, I maybe could have made the animation better by having a small movement of the box lid going slightly down before going up. I think this would have improved the animation. Also if I was making this model again, I would pay some more attention to what the crate looks like on the inside and would have added more detail there.
But overall, I am pleased with this animation. It is simple, but it taught me a lot about using bone animation and I think this animation would be suitable to use in-game.