Walkcycle Tweaks

[llamapixel]

Hello Everyone,
Long time Anime studio 7 user who never forum'd up and only now after upgrading to version 9 debut have I started to get chatty.

I have been following some walkcycle tutes on the youtube channels and managed to glean a lot of valuable and cool information.
I am using the frame 1 extended full then copy paste to end frame ( say 24 ) then reversing the frame 12 pose, finally lifting legs on 6 and 18.
I found a tute* that mentioned locking the foot bones from the end to start in the timeline and that was quite a nice tweak to move the torso slightly.

I was wondering if there is other tweaks I could add and part of this question also extends into adding a master control bone to some templates that are supplied without one. Is it easy to add this master control bone? I want to start adding a bit more flexibility in the torso area.
In my first tests I was getting a reverse walk look and I realise I have to make some mistakes to get a better look.
Any tweaks would be fantastic.

[A] Preliminary backwards fails lol. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaRZ9ssz ... re&index=3
A little better progress but also some issues with the top torso. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kudrMOgC ... 7g&index=5

Any advice would be fantastic and thanks in advance.
PS It may be a day or two before I can get back to the studio for a reply here.

[ddrake]

It's a decent start. I think the next step is incorporating vertical movement to your character. Think of someone walking or running on a treadmill, even if the angle of the hips/torso stay relatively the same, the body (and all of its parts) will have some vertical motion.

Here's a couple walk cycles I just did with the "character wizard" skeleton rig:



The Left Character is the default Char. Wizard walk cycle. (Not a big fan of presets in Character Wizard, but it's a decent jumping off point.) Note, even though it looks a little odd, the body is moving up and down.

The middle is the same cycle with adjustments to give some of the exaggerated movement some kind of purpose. (He's a little jaunty now)

The right, is a toned down sulky version, not as high of leg raises, dragging sort of feet. A little looser torso/head follow through, but leaving heavy dangling arms.

[ddrake]

Just for my own practice and to get a better sense of what you're dealing with I pulled in the SideView Liz, and tried my hand at a quick walk cycle. It is an interestingly rigged character, and the skirt bones don't leave a lot of room to play with.

[Danimal]

the body (and all of its parts) will have some vertical motion.

Definitely. In the first one it was more pronounced, but in both it sort of just looked like the character was hanging there dangling its arms and legs.

Also, though the second walk cycle was better, the front leg didn't come far enough forward. it never came farther forward than the body, meaning the character would never actually move anywhere, just stand there kicking her legs back.

Good starts though, keep at it!

[ddrake]

I found a tute* that mentioned locking the foot bones from the end to start in the timeline and that was quite a nice tweak to move the torso slightly.
...

part of this question also extends into adding a master control bone to some templates that are supplied without one. Is it easy to add this master control bone?

BTW, none of my tests incorporated any of these elements, just wanted to see what could be done with the rig as is. Bone locking can yield some pretty good results, esp. for a character that is actually moving through the space with their walk, (not a background scrolling behind.) It helps keep the feet from getting "slidey," but I found some odd things occur occasionally with locking and unlocking bones, like sort of popping from a locked position into another position in the next frame. I would usually use a combo of locks and onionskin matching.

As far as adding bones to an existing rig, that should be easy enough to do. But unless you want the new bone to be a child of any existing ones, make sure you don't have any bones selected. Then make the new bone, and set parenting. I've found it doesn't seem to let you swap parent/child from an original master or first bone in the set.

Though, for my examples I just manipulated the "hip" or whatever the heck bone all the bone's originate back to. (though it wasnt that easy to grab all the time with a full profile view and overlapping bones.)

[llamapixel]

Hey guys, I made it back, thanks for your input ddrake however, I probably should of clarified my questions more accurately because I want some actual advice on how to solve these issues and not critique without steps to practice with.

Here goes round 2.

Question 1 : How do I add a PARENT Bone between these bones that appear in the image below which is the problem I am having with the upper torso of the test models.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f013iarqwbwgh ... .04.37.JPG

Question 2: Is there a tutorial I can look at with definitive actions, steps and procedures or a help file that I can watch / read etc. and learn from that which discusses better illusions of movement of the upper torso when dealing with a rig of this nature or a rig with the parent bone being between the legs and torso.

I recently found the skirt bones in Liz Model which solves my leg appearing in front of the skirt.
I need to address some more techniques after placing frame 6 and 18 which is the leg elevation from behind.
The above stuff is the parent bone issue I want some solid objective advice with.

Cheers for any solid methods which I can validate and practice with.

[ddrake]

Hey llama,

Sorry for jumping the gun there. Had been working a lot with trying to customize and adjust character wizard components, and just went straight to wanting to play around with those rigs for some reason. Maybe I'll try to slow down and take things one at a time.

Here's a pretty decent basic walk cycle tutorial from "Incredible Tutorials" that incorporates some torso movement. Also uses an alternative for the vertical motion by keying a scaled squash into the cycle, (thereby avoiding the need to translate up and down hip movement)



In the long run though, having a little more control over rig orientation and vertical motion is pretty useful. If I'm correct, you're just looking for a way to add a more accessible bone that is a parent for the whole rig? If that's the case, you would just need to use the Bone Select tool, and click anywhere that is not already a bone. (to make sure your new bone is not a child of anything else) Then use Add Bone to create your new Parent Bone, (Could be placed anywhere, but since the hip is probably already the parent and the most likely pivot point, somewhere around there would work.) Then Bone Select the existing hip bone and ReParent that to your new bone.

Now, if you're looking to actually add a new bone into the torso area within the existing rig and have it control points within the torso specifically, then we're talking a little more complicated. Anyway, I'll leave it at this for now and see if this time around I'm in any way more helpful and we'll go from there

[llamapixel]

I really appreciate your help mate and I get some time to practice today so I will let you know how I go.
It's Saturday here and I dedicate some time to free play craft.

[llamapixel]

ddrake

That was a great tutorial and I mentally gobbled it up and made a quick cheat sheet if anyone wants it.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/305 ... tSheet.pdf


Breaking the Bone was a great insight for me anyway.

I need to practice those movements now so it is second nature without thinking and improve my speed by recording the time it takes to make a walk cycle fast under pressure.

PS>
I only upgraded to debut 9 on sale for hobby fun so far, Is there something you can't live without in Pro if you have upgraded yourself?

[ddrake]

I haven't used Debut versions but here's Smith Micro's breakdown of the differences.
http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html

As far as what I can't live without, it's tough to say having not used anything but Pro. My guess is it would feel like quite a lot to me going backwards and being limited. If you're into it for hobby purposes alone, I would say you can probably still accomplish some decent stuff with Debut. I'd suggest just working with that, learning some things for a while and if you like it and start to feel like your knowledge and skill are surpassing what the program allows, then consider an upgrade.

Smart bones are fantastic and I've been experimenting with the 3D (2.5D really) capabilities, and Pro becomes very versatile and powerful if you can figure out what you're doing. Definitely worth the upgrade if you hope to do a lot with the program and are willing to put the time in.

[Danimal]

Is there something you can't live without in Pro if you have upgraded yourself?

The limit on the time of animation alone made me steer clear of Debut from the start. Also, I've come to love patch layers and Debut doesn't have those. At the time I got into Anime Studio (5.5), there was no Ctrl + R to render individual frames in Debut. I'm not sure if that's still the case but there's no way I could work without that.

Ddrake, with all your brilliant work with 3D environments, Debut doesn't allow for layer rotate in 3D space so thank goodness you never used it.