Okay, so I decided to tackle making a golf swing animation. Been meaning to try something like this for a while.
Getting Started
First thing I did was just watch a whole lot of golf swings. Like, on YouTube and stuff. Needed to get the basic idea of the movement, how the body turns, where the club goes. You see pros do it, looks smooth, but breaking it down is tricky.
Blocking it Out
Then, I fired up my software. Didn’t have a super fancy character model, just a basic one I could pose. Grabbed a simple cylinder for the club. The main thing was getting the key poses down first. You know, like:
- The setup, standing over the ball.
- The top of the backswing, all coiled up.
- Impact, hitting the imaginary ball.
- The follow-through, swinging around.
Getting these main points right felt like half the battle. Had to really fiddle with the character’s hips and shoulders to make the twist look believable. Made sure the weight looked like it was shifting, not just staying static. Spent a good chunk of time just on these poses.
Making it Move
Once those key poses looked kinda okay, I started working on the ‘in-betweens’. This is where you make it actually animate instead of just jumping between poses. Told the software to help fill in the gaps, but it never gets it perfect first try.
Lots of tweaking here. Played it back, saw it looked jerky. Went back, adjusted the timing. Maybe made the backswing a bit slower, the downswing faster. Played it again. Still not right. The arms looked kinda stiff. Went back in, added some slight curves to their movement, tried to make it arc naturally.
Ran into problems too. Sometimes the club would just slice right through the character’s body. Had to adjust the arm rotation or the club’s path to fix that. Little things like that pop up all the time, just gotta deal with them one by one.
Getting the Feel
Tried to focus on the rhythm. A golf swing isn’t just mechanical parts moving; it’s got a flow. A bit of anticipation before it starts, then the swing itself, and settling down after. Added small details, like the head staying relatively still until after impact. These little things seemed to help make it look less robotic.
End Result
So, after a bunch of back and forth, playing it, tweaking it, playing it again, I got something that looks like a golf swing. It’s not perfect, mind you, not like professional game animation or anything. But the basic motion is there. You can see the wind-up, the hit, the follow-through. It was a good exercise, learned a lot just by doing it step-by-step. Just gotta keep practicing, I guess.
