Can I enlarge character progressively while in walk cycle ?

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Animator101
Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Jul 16, 2017 7:18 pm

Can I enlarge character progressively while in walk cycle ?

Post by Animator101 »

I animated a walk cycle. Character is coming forward towards the screen. Now since3 he walks in place of course to give the illusion of him coming closer I tried to make him bigger in a few seconds by making layer bigger. In a first frame he is tiny in a last he is huge because he came close. Now the problem is ...for some reason me changing the size of the layer results in cycle being broken or him getting bigger and bigger till the end of the cycle and than back to small. Lime it is looped. I mean cycle is only 25 frames and I need him to get progressively bigger in 100 frames so 4 times the cycle. Do you have any idea what I might be doing wrong ?

P.S. I had a small break from using Moho, I might have forgotten technique for doing this so, don't go balistic cuz I asked noob question :)
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hayasidist
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Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:12 pm
Location: Kent, England

Re: Can I enlarge character progressively while in walk cycl

Post by hayasidist »

check the "additive cycle" box for the layer scale animation?
Animator101
Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Jul 16, 2017 7:18 pm

Re: Can I enlarge character progressively while in walk cycl

Post by Animator101 »

Thank you
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Greenlaw
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Re: Can I enlarge character progressively while in walk cycl

Post by Greenlaw »

For this sort of thing, I usually animate the character 'in place'. Then, I put the character in a separate 'scale and pos' group, and set the origin to a point between the feet.

To have the character walk around the scene and come towards camera, I reposition and scale the group to move the character. Because the keyframes are completely independent of the character's rig, I don't have the conflict you described. By placing the origin between the feet, the character always scales from 'ground up', which is more natural and a lot easier to deal with.

Bonus 1: Sometimes I'll nest the character in multiple groups, each with a different origin, so I can transform the character from different points. This is useful when there's a lot of activity going on and the character needs to be airborne part of the time.

Bonus 2: you can use the scale and pos group with the 'feet origin' to add secondary squash and stretch when a character is walking, running, moving quickly, etc. Do this after you get your main character animation locked. Keep it subtle. If you do it well, this simple trick can add more life to your animations.
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