actual walking n performing actions

[synthsin75]

You have to only keyframe the specific bones in each action. Walk only keys the legs, wave only the arms, etc.. Not a good idea to use freeze pose or key everything in an action.

[MrMiracle77]

Understanding the timeline is key to this. In the timeline for your bone layer, the top three lines will usually have icons in white to indicate the overall pose at that part of the timeline. You can copy and paste these points to other parts of the timeline to duplicate that pose elsewhere.

When you have a bone selected, a trio of red icons (default color) will appear below the three white icons, each with a line representing the movement of that individual bone. You can copy/paste/delete these points just like you would with any other point on the timeline, but this will only impact the selected bone. One trick to taking the upper body out of the walk cycle is to delete the points associated with the upper body bones and replace them with the movements you'd prefer. You can then copy poses from the original walk cycle to return the upper body to its original walk pattern.

One helpful trick for this is to give the off-movement bones a different color. Their icons in the timeline will change to match.

I did this technique not too long ago for a character walking with a 'pimp cane', so that the cane only set down every other step.

[slowtiger]

I like to keep my stuff simple. For a scene like this: person walking while talking and gesturing, my preferred solution is to keep the bone rigs of upper and lower body separate. I'd use a structure like this:

Top bone layer (with the root bone on the ground)
- Hip bone layer
- - hips / bum
- - left leg
- - right leg
- Body bone layer
- - body
- - left arm
- - right arm
- - Head bone layer
- - - head
- - - Mouth Switch layer
- - - - mouth shape 1
- - - - mouth shape 2 etc.

With this I will have 3 separate bone layer timelines: one just for the walking, one for the body and arms, and one for talking/faces. Much easier to keep overview, and no big deal if you make a mistake.

With every bone in just one general timeline one must be very careful about selecting the right keys before changing something, so fucking up is easy and correcting is hell.

[cgrotke]

Separating bone layers... I think this should be emphasized.

I think many of us tend to think we need one bone layer with all the bones per character. Multiple bone layers per character is a great tip for simplifying timelines.

[Greenlaw]

I actually find it easier to put all my bones for a character in a single layer, and with the new Vitruvian Bones, I probably feel even more strongly about this. It's just convenient to see everything in a single timeline and not have to switch or search for other bone layers.

Of course, now that we have cool layer selection tools from third-party scripters, having multiple bone layers inside a character isn't so awkward to animate anymore. (For those unfamiliar with these tools, see Layer Shortcuts and Layer Selection Buttons)