tutorial for ducking/crouching animation in spriter ?

[bwwd]

This is very basic animation but im wondering how it should be done in spriter , i tried various methods and failed, feet always move and wont stay on the ground, it works really nice when you lock foot and knee bone with IK locking then grab torso and move down, character is ducking perfectly but once its animated then its quite a mess and feet go through the ground , adding keyframes midway to fix this isnt really that nice looking and i still can see that feet are moving.

The only way is to disconnect feet bones from knee bones because knee bones are pushing feet bones down throug hthe ground, this is how it looks like :

 

ITs with 2 keyframes at 0 and 500, then when i add keyframes at 250 and 750 to move feet to their proper place on the ground then it looks like this :

 

Still bad.

So i was wondering how do you guys do it so animations like this looks like they should ? In other software i just use proper IK rig and i never had this problem but in spriter its a bit weird, theres no priority at all, knee bones are pushing feet bones even tho knee bones dont hgave any keyframes, i think there should be priority so for example if foot has keyframe on 0 and 500 and knee follows it then knee should not push foot bone like that especially if foot bone is in the same position on both keyframes.Knee bone is affecting animation but it doesnt really have any keyframe, i do this animation by locking feet and knee bones with IK locking and then i pull torso bone down, so only torso is having keyframe really thats all, but hip and knee bones dont really bend as fast as they should, in my opinion spriter should know that it needs to bend knees faster so they wont push feet through the ground.

.I dont know, there should be some other way to do it nicely with 2 keyframes only but currently i have no clue thats why im asking here.

How to do crouch animation and keep feet on the ground at all times ?

The only way i think is to disconnect feet bones from knee bones, you still need to create keyframes at 250 and 750 to fix ankle area so its in proper shape.Not possible to do with only 2 keyframes, i needed 4 for this :

I believe this could be fixed by setting priority in spriter so when bone is in the same spot on 2 keyframes then other bones should never be able to move it from its place between these 2 keyframes.Or maybe rigs with breaking IK chains will be introduced i dont know, so far its not possible to do such simple animation without breaking skeleton.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Currently it cant be done perfectly with 2 keys because IK is for posing key frames but is not processed during play-back.  My method and suggestion is to actually de-parent the feet bones or images before you start animating. and IK lock the ankle bones.  This should guarantee the feet are perfectly still... you might need to tweak ankle bone positions in a few keyframes though, depending on the type of character rigging.

 

Cheers.

 

-Mike at BrashMonkey