I began the work on the run and jump using references to running and hurdle jumping.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4-u69xUzQ24?feature=share 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRaWd_pCZQ8

With these references, I made this animation:

However, this pass felt off – my classmate helpfully pointed out that the feet clipped weirdly and the timing didn’t feel natural. I had already done some editing in the graph editor, and there were so many keyframes that everything felt too clogged to edit cleanly. I decided to restart with more references and without the auto-keyframing tool on, as it had clogged up the timeline until I didn’t know what was where. Restarting with prior knowledge worked well on the weight-lifting animation, so I started a new file.

These are the new references I used. They have a better angle, so I screenshotted the important parts and used them as references to pose my character with.

This is the completed blocking phase. A problem I can spot right away is that you can tell where the loop ends and starts. I wasn’t yet sure how to fix that, so I moved to the bezier interpolation mode to see if it looked good and smooth.

This is the problem I ran into. The model was glitching between frames. I tried spreading the frames out and making an in-between frame, but the glitch persisted. There seemed to be an abrupt shift in the graph editor for the chest rig piece, but moving it didn’t fix the problem. Stumped, I asked the UU discord for help and got a response from Alec.

He responded with this;

However, when Aodhan and I tried this method, it didn’t work. We thought the problem might be the version, so I brought the file to the Uni’s computer. I don’t fully understand why, but the filter worked on the shoulder rigs.

After this, Aodhan gave me some more notes to work on;

• Have the foot come down flat 2 or so frames after impact (add down impact on hips too) 
• Fix jump height and timing 
• Push the hip Y axis to match the ups and downs of the run

I did all these, but noticed that the head was glitching – I tried googling the issue, I tried using the euler filter and editing on the graph editor on different parts of the rig to try to fix it, but I have no idea why it is turning weirdly. The rest looks good, however, so with the deadline looming, I admitted defeat. It seems I’ve done all I know how to do.

This is the final product.