Man, I never realised how hard a walk cycle is.
1st Walk Cycle Ever (AVI)
1st Walk Cycle Ever (Quicktime)
Comments and Critiques certainly welcome.
My first walk cycle
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
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LittleFenris
- Posts: 246
- Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 7:29 pm
- Location: USA!
You have design talent, that's for sure, your animation skills need some work, well ok a lot...
I like the head, the detail and the floppy ears, that's good. But the ears don't seem to be responding to other movement, they're just flopping around. Try lifting the upper body and head during steps and make the ears follow that movement.
The legs only have one bone for each leg, is that correct? Try a bone for the upper leg, lower leg and foot. And walk around your house. Are both of your feet in the air at one time? If so, how's the walking over water thing going? Just kidding, but notice the way you walk on two legs, quite simply walking is falling forward without dropping to the floor.
If walking costs too much energy look at this link (again?) http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html
Switch the lines on, rotate the model and play with the controls.
As I said, your drawing skills are impressive, if you can make the animation in the same quality you're in business!
Good luck,
Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com
I like the head, the detail and the floppy ears, that's good. But the ears don't seem to be responding to other movement, they're just flopping around. Try lifting the upper body and head during steps and make the ears follow that movement.
The legs only have one bone for each leg, is that correct? Try a bone for the upper leg, lower leg and foot. And walk around your house. Are both of your feet in the air at one time? If so, how's the walking over water thing going? Just kidding, but notice the way you walk on two legs, quite simply walking is falling forward without dropping to the floor.
If walking costs too much energy look at this link (again?) http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html
Switch the lines on, rotate the model and play with the controls.
As I said, your drawing skills are impressive, if you can make the animation in the same quality you're in business!
Good luck,
Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com
I also like your drawing very much. I have a couple more things to add to what was already said.
I like the detail of the eye blinking but , though its real hard to see so forgive me if I'm wrong, only the right eye is blinking. People and cats blink both eyes together, unless they are winking. If he is winking, some of the face should move too.
When people walk they tend to lean forward into the walk. Your character is leaning back a bit as his right leg comes forward. But I have seen in cartoons characters leaning back slightly as they walk if they are sneeking around on tip toes.
It was already said that the feet need their own bones. You might even put two bones in the feet so they can flex as the hit the ground. I think there is an example of that in one of the tutorials.
Having said all that, I also want to say that you have done more than I have so far. I have not done a walk cycle, but I have seen a lot of animated walking and example walk cycles on the web. I have however done a "hop cycle" for a rabbit. That has similar considerations, plus stretching and squishing of the body as it leaps and lands.
I like the detail of the eye blinking but , though its real hard to see so forgive me if I'm wrong, only the right eye is blinking. People and cats blink both eyes together, unless they are winking. If he is winking, some of the face should move too.
When people walk they tend to lean forward into the walk. Your character is leaning back a bit as his right leg comes forward. But I have seen in cartoons characters leaning back slightly as they walk if they are sneeking around on tip toes.
It was already said that the feet need their own bones. You might even put two bones in the feet so they can flex as the hit the ground. I think there is an example of that in one of the tutorials.
Having said all that, I also want to say that you have done more than I have so far. I have not done a walk cycle, but I have seen a lot of animated walking and example walk cycles on the web. I have however done a "hop cycle" for a rabbit. That has similar considerations, plus stretching and squishing of the body as it leaps and lands.
Perhaps the Walk Tutorial by TeoToon in the Tips&Techniques forum might help. It has a Moho file and a full description in PDF.
Love your character! You're right, walk cycles are hard. I found TeoToon's tutorial helpful, but also, if you want a good book, The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams, is an excellent one, with a lot of good info in it about walk cycles.
To add to what everyone else has already said, I think you're on the way there. One thing I see is that the leg and arm movements are not smooth. They're not equal. One side seems to move forward faster, then the other side seems to move forward more slowly, giving a slightly jerky appearance. Also, the character seems to be floating above the ground, rather than on the ground. This might be caused by the character's shadow being under him, but not attached to him, so he floats above his own shadow. This isn't so apparent in the Quicktime movie, where he doesn't have a shadow.
Jack
To add to what everyone else has already said, I think you're on the way there. One thing I see is that the leg and arm movements are not smooth. They're not equal. One side seems to move forward faster, then the other side seems to move forward more slowly, giving a slightly jerky appearance. Also, the character seems to be floating above the ground, rather than on the ground. This might be caused by the character's shadow being under him, but not attached to him, so he floats above his own shadow. This isn't so apparent in the Quicktime movie, where he doesn't have a shadow.
Jack
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LittleFenris
- Posts: 246
- Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 7:29 pm
- Location: USA!
Thanks for all the suggestions.
I wanted to clear up some things about the models setup so I took a screenshot in Moho so you could see exactly how he is setup:
Each limb on him has 3 bones...one for the upper section, one for the lower section and one for the foot or hand. His head is setup with a seperate set of bones for secondary motion like the ears flopping and eyebrows moving, plus his whiskers have some bones so they can flop around as well. His tail even has its own set of bones so I can control its movement independent of all the other parts. I did notice that his legs look like they aren't bending, I'll have to exagerate the movement of the limbs to show they do actually bend.
BTW, heres another character I'm working on for the same story as the Samurai kitty:
I wanted to clear up some things about the models setup so I took a screenshot in Moho so you could see exactly how he is setup:
Each limb on him has 3 bones...one for the upper section, one for the lower section and one for the foot or hand. His head is setup with a seperate set of bones for secondary motion like the ears flopping and eyebrows moving, plus his whiskers have some bones so they can flop around as well. His tail even has its own set of bones so I can control its movement independent of all the other parts. I did notice that his legs look like they aren't bending, I'll have to exagerate the movement of the limbs to show they do actually bend.
BTW, heres another character I'm working on for the same story as the Samurai kitty:
I found some interesting stuff on walk cycles at the Animation & Interactive Media site of the University of RMIT, Australia:
Animation Project #4 - The Walk Cycle
and if you don't own Preston Blair's book, here are the relevant schematics.
Preston Blair's Movement of the two legged figure
Preston Blair's Movement of the four legged figure
Preston Blair's Front & rear views of figure movements
Note: Some of the course material on the AIM site has already been deleted, so I don't know how long these links will remain valid.
Edit: changed wrong URLs
Sorry! They are now correct.
Animation Project #4 - The Walk Cycle
and if you don't own Preston Blair's book, here are the relevant schematics.
Preston Blair's Movement of the two legged figure
Preston Blair's Movement of the four legged figure
Preston Blair's Front & rear views of figure movements
Note: Some of the course material on the AIM site has already been deleted, so I don't know how long these links will remain valid.
Edit: changed wrong URLs
Sorry! They are now correct.
Last edited by Rasheed on Mon May 23, 2005 3:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Or go to:
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~rpyjp/a_ ... oject.html
And all the links are at the bottom of the page...
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~rpyjp/a_ ... oject.html
And all the links are at the bottom of the page...
The wrong URLs came from my webgrabber program. It wasn't easy to find the files with all those broken links, so I downloaded the whole lot. Webgrabber renamed the root name, by changing ":80" into "_80". That explains it.
Again, sorry for any inconveniance.
BTW, there's also an interesting text on pose-to-pose animation:
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~rpyjp/a_notes/anim_pose.html,
if you want to do more than just walk cycles.
Also check:
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~rpyjp/a_notes/cycles.html,
for more background on what types of cycles there are.
Again, sorry for any inconveniance.
BTW, there's also an interesting text on pose-to-pose animation:
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~rpyjp/a_notes/anim_pose.html,
if you want to do more than just walk cycles.
Also check:
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~rpyjp/a_notes/cycles.html,
for more background on what types of cycles there are.