walk work flow(arms)

Whew, its been a lot of explaining to do for my first cycle in ages. Great refresher for me though!! Man I needed it.

Ok so the arms are pretty easy. All the rules from the pendulum exercise apply. Its just instead of one control we have 3. So all I do is rotate my arms down to my side, (remember this is a tough guy walk so the elbows need to be out like this guy has the largest lats in the world and cant bring em down more) so that pose is set. Now I go to side view. Frame 1 right foot forward means right arm back. Frame 17 means right arm forward, frame 33 same as 1.

Heres my curves for that arm. So I copy that animation, paste it onto my other arm, and paste it onto my lower arm. I know copy that animation on the lower arm, drag it where its posed nicely and scale it do a proper amount of movement, and I offset it by about 4 frames. I take that animation copy it to the wrist, and the other arms lower arm. I take my wrist and repeat the above steps.

I go over to my other arm now, copy paste that offset it by 16 frames, do that to lower arm, and wrist. And voila, almost done.

I now need to work the upper arm a bit on each arm. As the arm comes forward it sways out a bit. So I set that key on each arm passing pose, and I spline it, and it works nicely. Lastly as the arm comes out of the passing pose we tend to bring our body, so I rotate that in there as well. Repeat on the other arm, and your arms are finished. If you want to go with IK, well why use IK on a walk cycle when fk is so easy to do?

walk work flow(upper torso)

Ok so the hips are done. The feet are done. Now I need to work the spine.
All my timing is figured out. So what I like to do here is to reuse my existing animation, and just pull things around in the graph editor to pose the character. First though I go to the head, I know there is two steps, so the head should rotated up and down subtley when the weight comes down. So I set an extreme key on 1 and 17 and another on 9. I copy paste it so the next goes to frame 33 and I spline it, and copy paste it again so I have 77 frames of animation. The weight comes down on the root on frame 3, so I need my head to start rotating down from frame 3, So I just drag the one extreme to frame 3 and that is done. I can now use this animation for some nice subtle spine movements on the spine. I start on the first fk spine and copy the animation to frame 1, and scale it way down so the values of each extreme are almost the same. I copy that onto each fk spine control. The back looks pretty wierd right now. I go to frame 1 with the graph editor open, I grab the curves and just translate them to where the lower back is on my reference image, and do that with the second and third back controls till I have the pose I was using. From here I can offset each control to follow one frame after the other so I have a nice loose spine but without to much movement so the pose still reads.
Now I need to work in the chest rotations. I know the timing for that will be the same as my hip rotations, its just the chest rotates the opposite direction. Ok easy enough. I can do the same trick with the chest animation. I copy it onto the chest control. I copy paste that animation, and drag it back so my extreme on 17 is my extreme on 1. I can now scale that animation up so its bigger and the pose reflects what I want. To further give myself some nice contraposto, I copy the hips animation onto the fk 1 control, offset it by just 1 frame and scale it down. Again on fk 2 and offset a few more frames, and scale that down as well. Now my whole spine is working nicely, and I really only animated my head and my hips.

walk workflow(upper body, hips)

So my feet are done. My root has its up and down. What do I do next?
Well the root is my base of operations and key to everythings timing, so lets go there. We need that nice figure 8 I was talking about earlier to show this guy has weight. So when he steps on one foot the weight comes over to it cause that foot is taking the weight, when he steps on the next, it goes over there.

So if frame one the left foot is contacting, we know the weight needs to be over there. So I take weight over to the opposite leg, cause it must be coming from there. Set a key on 1 and 33, make the exact opposite on frame 17. You now have your extremes. You can play with the extremes from here if you want more add it if you have to much make it less. Make these poses really work before we start animating it more. So here is an image of my final root curves. Notice I have my extremes, and two keys in between each extreme. This is for a few reasons.

1. Slow in and slow out. I want to slow into each extreme, and slow out of each extreme.

2.The weight doesn't start to shift over to the leg until the leg has really contacted. So it starts subtley moving over on the heel contact frame. Then once the leg is on the ground it really takes that weight, then as the foot starts rolling forward it prepares to release the weight onto the other foot. So each key is on each frame for a reason. This timing will be used for everything we do on the hips. Which is next.

So the weight shift is done, now the hips need to do there thing. The hips can either lead the leg, or follow the leg, depends on the personality of your walk or your reference. In this walk my hips are leading the leg. So I set my extreme on frame 1 the right foot is contacting, so I rotate my hip forward to point to that leg. Same on 33, opposite on 17. I set an inbetween to help the slow in and out, and thats really it for that part of the hips. The next part is really important. When the leg has the weight, the hip needs to shoot up on that side of the leg to show the leg has the weight of the body on it. This is purely a physics thing. It just has to happen. So once my foot is planted I shoot the hip up from that frame pretty quickly. And hold it there till the next foot plants. You can see that from frame 3 and frame 19 is where all the action happens, cause that is when the foot is planted. Its the motivation for the hip to shoot up. So that is pretty much the hips. You can add some translating or some thrusting back and forth if the cycle calls for it.

walk workflow(doing feet)

Ok. So I have my reference gathered. I know my timing, I know my poses. I know what I want this walk to look like, and move like. Its all there. Now how do I do it??

Here's my workflow I was taught some of this in school, some of this I have adapted. Pretty much everything on the body has already been covered by earlier tutorials. The figure 8 of the root control. The pendulum of the arms. The movement of the feet. Its all been covered its just practically applying the basics we did with the sphere.

So the first thing I like to do is the root control. For now just the up and down of the root. So I know a walk cycle needs two up and downs. My reference will tell me how much later the weight come downs after the foot contacts the ground. Heres what my graph editor looks like for that.

Some things to notice.

1. There is two ups and downs(1 for each step)

2. The first down comes on frame 3, 2 frames after the foot has contacted.

3.There is a key inbetween each extreme to control the tempo.

Next thing I do is my feet extremes. So frame 1 17 and 33. Frame 1 and 33 are the same. Frame 17 is the push off. I like to do this a little different than most ppl though. Since efficiency is so important in animation I like to do both feet at the same time and offset them later.

One very important thing to remember is that when the foot is coming backward the curves are in linear! Very important so when the walk is projected forward there is no slipping in it. Here are the curves for the feet after the timing has been worked out. On the poses established.

The red line is the feet coming forward and back(you can identify the back by the long straight line with no keys along the way) The black curves are for the foot roll. This rig is unique in a few ways from some other rigs. It has the the toe roll built in to the foot roll, so once you go past a certain value the toe roll kicks in. So ill explain a lot of things here as this kinda is a bit tricky.

The foot for one does not start coming forward yet on frame 17 like you would assume. The knee at this frame stops moving backwards, and starts moving forward. If you look at our reference on pg 109 of the survival kit, the foot starts coming forward on frame 5 which is actually frame 21 of our cycle. I find in cg not to hold it back for so long as you will start having a ton of pops to deal with, so I bring it forward on frame 19. Now notice the foot roll peaks on frame 19, but it doesn't start coming back quite yet. This is important because the ankle needs to lead the foot forward not the foot!! With this particular rig, you cant build a nice pose with just that control for the push off, I needed to grab the toe control build the nice pose you see in the book for the passing pose. Lots to cover and that control is pretty easy to figure out without me explaining it.

So thats most of the work done for the feet(in the side viewport anyways) We now need to go in there and polish the knees up. A knee should go forward and not stick in the same place for 2 or 3 frames. It should come backward and not pop forward on a frame ever. If it does either of these things its bad. Usually you can fix this with the footroll control. What I like to do is zoom in to the knee, and look at it, sometimes you get lucky and it all works fine other times it doesnt. So if it is popping or sticking, open the graph editor, set a key before the pop, Shift I mmb on the frame before. And shift i mmb on the frame of, pull that key till the knee has progressed enough forward and backward to not pop, check your next frame repeat till no pops. Sometimes on the foot roll, Ill have keys for every frame :S

Next front view port. What needs to happen? The foot contacts the ground on the pinky toe and rolls onto the big toe. (This coincendentally is why wcb pays more when you lose your pinky toe and not your big toe, Dont ask me why I know this, and yes I have all my toes.) So grab whatever control lets you do this, if you dont have one you can rotate the foot.So go to frame 1 and rotate the toe out to land on the pinky toe, and have it settle back to straight come frame 4 or 5. After the foot leaves the ground and starts coming forward have it slowly coming back to the values you gave it on frame 1. Now you need have the foot not move in a straight line coming forward. So first off check your reference and find out where you want the foot in the pose. Now when the foot starts coming forward have start moving out to the point you need it to be on the passing pose, and bring it back to where your initial pose was on the contact frame. Pretty simple. With that done we now need to offset the feet. Coincidentally these last two steps have to be done 1 foot at a time. So open up a foot, and you will see all that animation. Add a key on the second frame and second to last frame, you can grab all shift i mmb or press s on the time slider on these frames. I like to do it the graph editor way. Now grab all your curves. go to the last frame, and press ctrl c ctrl v. You now have two sets of that animation. Now grab it all and drag it back to frame -16 or whatever makes it look right. You can tell by clicking on frame 1 17 and 33. You should see no movement at all on these frames. Thats it. Your feet are done.

You may need to go back and rework the feet a bit after we start things on the hips, but very minimally.

walk cycles Pt.1

Winter sucks. Havent had time for any animating this past little while. Got some this week though so all's well for the time being.
Ok, so I guess its time to move on to some more exciting things. Everything has been pretty basic and boring thus far, so the thought of some walk cycles is pretty exciting.
So before we start I guess lets get out some reference(Richard Williams) and take it from there.
Dick says, no two ppl walk the same, no walk is the same. The principles of a walk are all the same, but every walk is different. Heres a great tidbit, actors try and figure out a character by figuring out how they walk, try to tell the whole story with just a walk. I remember a friend of mine in the acting industry was telling me a story about an actor name Arron Eckhart(two face in batman) Just walking around set, trying all sorts of things changing the time, posing, and just walking in circles for what seemed like ages(he was wierded out). When you think about how important a walk is to an actor though it should be totally normal to see this. So with this in mind when we get a character to animate, its super important to nail the walk.
On to the animation. I just watched a rad little animated short called Jungle Jail, and was pretty stoked when the main character had just conquered the jails tough guy, and started to power trip. And was walking through the jail like he was macho man. So here is the walk I did which is kinda emulating that one.

So using the timing chart Williams gave us pg 109 of the survival kit, I chose to do my first walk on 16's. 16 frames per step, 32 frame cycle. Starting on frame 1 ending on frame 33. Here is the side view of the walk.

Ok so with that stuff posted, Ill post my work flow next for this particular walk. After that's explained, hopefully i'll be able to start getting into much cooler personality walks that are outlined in the book.

watching your arcs pt2

Straight lines give power.
So arcs aren't always good.
Heres an example of an arrow hitting a target, and an arrow missing the target.

One more example with a rigged character.

watching your arcs(pt1)

All actions follow arcs.
Most of the time arcs are figures 8's or they are in a wave pattern.
So I guess now is a good time to practise my arcs in these patterns.
incidentall there is a great tool in maya that im continually shocked to read of ppl not knowing about still. Its called the motion trail. Simply select your object you are animating, go to animate and create motion trail. Automatically you will see the arc of your selected object. One other object im finding very useful lately is the ghost selection object. You can set the amount of frames prior to and after the frame you are on and see where the object is on those frames. Its a great way to figure out your spacing and plot your arcs. It will work interactively with you as you pull points around in the graph editor as well. Great tool!
First a circular arc. ( you can see the motion trail working here)

All I have done is set a key at 1 and 25 the same. set a key on 13 the opposite. set a key on 7 and 19 the opposite again and splined it. And you pretty much get a perfect circle. So if you are blocking in a hand doing a circle arc you know how its done. frame one = 5y frame 25= 5 y frame 13 = 5y. frame 7 = -5x frame 19 = +5x and just spline it up. This is what you get.

Figure 8 now.

same formula as before pretty much. Just a couple more keys in the y axis and you have a figure 8.