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Game Animation Tutorial 1: quick walk cycle in Character Studio (Page 3)
| Proceed to frame 10. The currently selected foot should already be in front of his body now. Just pose that leg so it looks like his heel is about to touch ground, with his knee almost straight, and his toes pointing upwards slightly. |
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Move your time slider to frame 6 now. You'll notice that his foot is slightly above the ground plane. You could actually leave it like this and get away with it. But I like to add one more key so I can add a little more personality later. Set a sliding key here, and pose the foot to best fit your character… If you're creating a lumbering, heavy character, raise it up so you can slam it later. If you're creating a light, tired character, leave it alone for now. And don't worry… nothing is final. Once you have frame 6 looking the way you'd like, return to frame 2, select the entire keyframed leg, and copy it's posture. Move to frame 14 and paste opposite. Move to frame 6, copy posture, move to frame 18 and paste opposite. And finally, move to frame 10, copy posture, move to frame 22 and paste opposite. This will make the lift motion for the opposite foot for you. Make sure that all the keyframes are set to IK blend for both feet, and play your animation back. He should be walking now… If you don't like the way it looks, offset a frame or 2… or play with the poses of your legs… If it's going too fast for you, don't worry, you'll have time to adjust his speed later on.
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| Now move to frame 3 and lower the Bip01 bone down slightly. Move to frame 9 and raise his Bip01 bone up slightly. This will make it look like your character has weight when you scrub through the first 12 frames. If it doesn't, keep adjusting the heights. Once you've got it how you want it, return to frame 3 and copy the Bip01's vertical posture and paste it on frame 15. Now copy frame 9's vertical posture and paste it on frame 21. This will make it so your entire walk has weight. Maximize your front or back view. Select the horizontal motion for your bip01 bone. Delete all your horizontal keys for your bip01 bone. This will start you with a clean slate. Go to frame 3, now move your bip01 bone on the X axis only to the right so it looks like it's above the inside of your right foot. Do NOT move it on the Y axis. |
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Now go to frame 15 and move bip01 over the inside of the opposite foot. When you play it back, he looks odd because he's only swaying in one direction then popping back, but don't worry, this will fix itself later on. Next step, we're going to set the hip rotation. Select the rotation of the bip01 (the circular button to the right of the vertical button) and set keys at frames 0, 12, and 24. Return to frame 0 and rotate your character's right hip forward on the local Z axis only (assuming his first step is with his right foot) till you believe it looks right. Look at the reference shot for a good amount. |
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