I have seen a variety of tutorials on walk cycle poses and keyframes, but once the walk cycle is created, the character needs to move across the screen. This is where tutorials vary and I'm wondering how most people do it.
One suggested to translate the layer while the cycle repeats. Certainly easy enough.
I've also seen it mentioned where using bone locking on and off to lock the grounded foot and actually get the character to walk across the screen. I would imagine this is much more time consuming, whether you use bone locking or not. Also with this method, you can't really cycle the walk, right? or they'd keep going back to take the same few steps forward and get nowhere.
i'm a newbie so appreciate comments on this.
andrew
Walk cycle: layer translation or only bone movement?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
I have found two ways to make the travel across the screen.
One is make the walk cycle with lock bones (feets) and repeat the cycle just moving the layer forward the same amount than the walk cycle length and the character backwards same amount than the length of the walk so it continues at more or less the same place in two consecutive frames. The problem is that you have to redo the lock bones for each cycle, because they are absolute to the layer and not relative to the walk cycle. So it works bot time consuming every time you repeat a walk cycle.
Second is forget the bone lock on feet. Do an static walk cycle (reusable by actions) and move the character main bone across the layer taking account that the feet should be as they were locked although they aren't. Once you have achieved a convincing traveling according to the already created walk cycle then take account the relative amount of movement for a walk cycle and repeat it increasing the base movement as many times as the walk cycle is repeated. I mean: If the walk cycle responds to a length of 0.5 and the intermediate keyframes for the main bone of the character are at 0,0 0.15, 0.20, 0.30, 0,35, 0,50 then in the second walk cycle the keyframes would become 0.5, 0.65, 0,70, 0.80, 0.85, 1,00. (I don't know if I have explained properly)
I prefer second. bone locking is a pain and a little of slicing feet is not a bad thing.
Maybe there is a third one. It is do the second way and use the translate layer of the first way.
Hope it helped you.
Best
Genete
One is make the walk cycle with lock bones (feets) and repeat the cycle just moving the layer forward the same amount than the walk cycle length and the character backwards same amount than the length of the walk so it continues at more or less the same place in two consecutive frames. The problem is that you have to redo the lock bones for each cycle, because they are absolute to the layer and not relative to the walk cycle. So it works bot time consuming every time you repeat a walk cycle.
Second is forget the bone lock on feet. Do an static walk cycle (reusable by actions) and move the character main bone across the layer taking account that the feet should be as they were locked although they aren't. Once you have achieved a convincing traveling according to the already created walk cycle then take account the relative amount of movement for a walk cycle and repeat it increasing the base movement as many times as the walk cycle is repeated. I mean: If the walk cycle responds to a length of 0.5 and the intermediate keyframes for the main bone of the character are at 0,0 0.15, 0.20, 0.30, 0,35, 0,50 then in the second walk cycle the keyframes would become 0.5, 0.65, 0,70, 0.80, 0.85, 1,00. (I don't know if I have explained properly)
I prefer second. bone locking is a pain and a little of slicing feet is not a bad thing.
Maybe there is a third one. It is do the second way and use the translate layer of the first way.
Hope it helped you.
Best
Genete
I still haven't found the One True Way to do a walk cycle really perfect. Bone locking isn't perfect because the "locked" part still moves a bit around. And sliding feet are no option for me.
Two tips:
1. Use a "scaffolding" layer with a grid to place your feet evenly. This means: I define the two extreme positions of a foot on the ground, mark the positions of the heel with a vertical stroke, then divide the distance between those strokes evenly by the number of frames, put more strokes there, and adjust the foot in each frame. Yes, each frame, a walk cycle needs this level of accuracy.
2. Think outside the box. Put the foot on a separate layer and double it. As long as the foot is in the air, leave it visible and connected to the leg bone rigging. When the foot is flat on the grount, make the bone connected foot invisible and instead show the unconnected one. This foot now can easily be tweened on the ground (linear tweening!). (This is a trick from classical pen&paper animation where a separate cel layer just for the feet is used to prevent slipping and wiggling.)
Two tips:
1. Use a "scaffolding" layer with a grid to place your feet evenly. This means: I define the two extreme positions of a foot on the ground, mark the positions of the heel with a vertical stroke, then divide the distance between those strokes evenly by the number of frames, put more strokes there, and adjust the foot in each frame. Yes, each frame, a walk cycle needs this level of accuracy.
2. Think outside the box. Put the foot on a separate layer and double it. As long as the foot is in the air, leave it visible and connected to the leg bone rigging. When the foot is flat on the grount, make the bone connected foot invisible and instead show the unconnected one. This foot now can easily be tweened on the ground (linear tweening!). (This is a trick from classical pen&paper animation where a separate cel layer just for the feet is used to prevent slipping and wiggling.)
Rather than walking the character on the spot and panning try actually stepping the character across the screen for one full cycle then translate the layer across screen in one big jump (using 'step' mode) and then repeat the cycle. Do this as many times as it takes to get the character through screen. With this method you can get accurate foot contact (with onionskinning) and you don't have to use bone locking.
Look here at my example:
http://gregingram.googlepages.com/muuvist
Look here at my example:
http://gregingram.googlepages.com/muuvist