How Do I... walk a character across the secreen?

[I Racer]

Hi all,

I'm learning a lot from all you helpful people - thank you so much.

One thing I'm wondering about is how to move a character across the screen during a walk cycle, without getting the awful 'skating' of the feet.
I can make a character walk - having watched many tutorials online - but they all show how to make the walking actions move in the middle of the screen - not across it.

How do you know how far to move the root bone (presumably you do use that for forward motion?) for each step to avoid the 'skating'? I need those feet and the body to move forwards, with each foot being firmly on the ground for each step. I know how to use Target Bones too, if those are necessary?

I know I could use a moving background, with the character starting in the middle of the screen, but I want to make a character walk from one side of the screen to the other.

Thanks in advance, and a very Happy Christmas to one and all.

[slowtiger]

I mostly construct my walks "in place", then have my character "slide" across the screen (put it into a group folder, and set interpolation to linear!). To make the feet appear to stay at where they placed, I either shift the last keyframe in time or that position on screen, then check again in the middle of the walk to see if there's still sliding. Just play around with this, you'll get the hang of it fast.

Of course there are other methods, especially when you have to work much more accurately, but this one works for me and is fast.

[jahnocli]

There are many approaches to this:
Additive Cycles
A Convincing Walk Cycle
Foot Locking Walk Cycle
Victor Paredes (aka selgin) also developed a "walk ruler" - it's a little old now but might help you - search for it on the forum
And Mike Kelley over at Animators Forum has developed a script called something like mk_walk_assist.zip
Good luck!

[Greenlaw]

Sometimes, I like to plot where the feet will go by drawing 'footprints' in a non-rendering layer; just use the freehand tool to rough this out. Then I animate the character stepping into these positions. This is useful when the character's walk is pretty specific to the scene.

But most of the time, I just do what slowtiger described, walk/run in place and then slide the character's group. If it's fast and the BG is moving, it looks fine. If it's slower, you'll need to finesse it a bit. Or not...sometimes the 'slipping' can be a valid artistic choice. Just be consistent.

[slowtiger]

The nice thing is that even after having the character cross the screen I can make fine adjustments to its feet's positions in the cycle to minimize sliding.

Of course it helps if you have a background which only has horizontal detail, so any sliding is harder to detect.

[I Racer]

Thanks very much for the replies, folks.

There were some excellent links and very helpful advice posted.

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy new year to all.