walk

[Torhn]

hi darkness,
i don't know what's the mather with your hands... maybe somme kinf of rigging problem.
For the loop it's quite easy, just copy paste the keys from the first frame to the last and than you have to edit the animation curves. The curve must have the same angle a the and and at the begining of the loop :) .

[pollywoggles]

Maybe copying the first key-frame and pasting it at your last key-frame? So, for instance, if you're animating in 12s, then frame 1 should be a duplicate of frame 25 (so copy frm 1 to frm 25), then when playing, loop through frames 1 - 24.

[Darknessseeker0]

Thanks so much guys for your advice. You all have helped me alot! Here's what I did today: http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/cartoonyWalk2.avi (http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/cartoonyWalk2.avi)

I have a front view but I dont like it at all. http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/cartoonyWalkFront.avi (http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/cartoonyWalkFront.avi)

I still have one question though. How can I make the animation loop after I've playblasted it?

[Torhn]

i remember that there is a specific controler that allow you to save motion clip for classical squeletton. For bipeb you have the motion flow that allow you to put différent motion togeder and to mix them. and other simple way is to copy paste your keys and than you just have to modify the deplacement of the main node. I hope that it can help you, but i'm not really an animator, so it'will be bether with a complete explanation from a specialist. instead you have the main ideas of how to do. I hope that i could have helped you.
ps: i'm not really sure of my english, sorry for the mistakes

Torhn

[the_podman]

If you're familiar with Maya's Trax editor, you can create a character set that has all of your keyable controlers and create a "clip" out of your cycle. This clip can then be cycled as many times as you want with or without offsets. I use Trax all the time to save out different versions I want to get access to without destroying my work. It's a useful and underlooked feature in Maya. Here's a pic of what the trax looks like(taken from my current project):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/trax.jpg



Interesting character,btw. Reminds me of RAYMAN.
Keyframes not recording may have to do with Set Driven Key on the hands. If you are keying with the "heirarchy below" option selected(not recommended by me), it'll key a rotation attribute that may be driven by SDK, which will "kill" your SDK connection. I dunno if thats the problem, but when I first started animating, I ran into this issue and had the same result.

-pod
My lastest game cycles (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_4_Hit_Combo.exe)
MY WIP (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=176727)

[mttjss]

Darkness - the_podman is right. The Trax Editor is great for controlling everything about your character. As a matter of fact I d/l the same Maya character you have there and he is easy to set up in the Character set. It makes things a little easier, and its definitely easier to key animation.

Here is a simple animation I did with that character.

dummy (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=211729)

[Darknessseeker0]

Thanks alot mttjss, the_podman, and Torhn! I really appriciate your help! I'll check out the trax editor. Will creating a character set for each controller mess up the animation since I've already keyed everything out? Mttjss, I saw your dummy animation, it's good so far. You're still working on that right? I'll follow it's progress. The_podman, I like that character since it reminds me of Rayman too. :thumbsup: That was a cool game!

[the_podman]

Your existing keys should be fine. The only thing you'll notice is that the attributes that were keyed will go from an orange to a yellow in the channel box. This indicates that they are part of a character set.

One other thing I should point out, when keying new animation for an existing "character", make sure the character select on the bottom right(the red arrow pulldown) is set to "no character". If you have it set to your character, and then press the "s" key, it'll key all controllers attributes, leaving you with a mess. Just set the pull down to "your character" when you are ready to create a "clip" out of your existing animation or if you want to move all the characters keys at the same time in the graph editor.

Check out Brian Immel's Maya tech page "Non-Linear ANimation" for further details on trax:
http://www.jawa9000.com/technical/

good luck,
-pod

**EDIT**
Something I forgot to mention about Character Sets that is useful, is that you can put the upper body controllers and the lowerbody controllers into different "subcharacter-sets". This will allow you to have control of the motions of the arms and legs as independant entities, so you could mix and match motions to your liking.

[Darknessseeker0]

Thanks again for your help the_podman! I've put all of the controlls in a character set and I've made a clip of the walk. I've copied and pasted the three times in the trax editor. Everything seems fine except the foot seems to freeze for a moment on the passing position. I don't know why that is. :shrug: http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/cartoonywalkFinal3.avi

[the_podman]

The reason why you get the slight "pause" is because the first frame and the end frame are the same pose, so when the clip starts up again, you are repeating frame 1 twice.

There are 2 ways to remedy this:
Let's say your clip is 25 frames. Turn your Character Set "on" and load up the Trax editor. Then Highlight the walk cycle clip(it turns yellow) and go to frame 24(or one frame before the last). Within the trax editor, go to EDIT>SPLIT. This will cut it into two clips. Delete the one-frame clip at the end and you're good to go.

Option 2 is to RIGHT-CLICK the clip and goto>ACTIVATE KEYS. The clip will turn PINK and your keyticks will be back on the timeline. Delete the PINK empty clip from trax, and open up the graph editor. Go to frame 24(on frame before the end) and set a key for all attribute on all controllers. Then, delete frame 25 so you now have a 24 frame clip.
Create another clip out of this and you're good to go.



To access all of your clips, go to WINDOW>GENERAL EDITORS>VISOR. All of your clips will be stored here and you can rename them, or delete them.

One other thing... You don't have to duplicate the clip to get it to loop. If you Select the clip and hit Ctrl+A to open up the attribute editor for the clip itself, you'll notice in the middle it says "post cycle" and "pre cycle". Just enter a value in this field and it will cycle for that amount.
If you want to "blend" two clips together. Space out 2 clips about 5 frames from each other. Select one clip, then Shift+Select the other and within the trax goto CREATE>BLEND. A green arrow should appear and your clips will "blend" in the inbetween gap.

Now, depending on which Maya you are using, if you are on MAYA 5 or 6, you highlight the clip and in the channel box, you set it to "absolute"(usually, this is what you want to do, unless the character is translating forward). If you are on MAYA 6.5, highlight the clip, hit Ctrl+A to get to the attribute editor, and you'll see a pulldown that says "channel offsets". This version of Maya gives you more control over which attributes(rotate, translates, scale) are relative and which are absolute, eliminating the need for sub-charater sets.

Hope this helps you,
-pod

[Darknessseeker0]

Thanks alot for your help the_podman! Here's an up-date:
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/cartoonyWalk6.avi

[Geddart]

Hey there!
I like that floting limb style of characters. The walk looks interesting.
One thing that makes me wonder though is why the hands and feet on one side of the body almost have the same strive cycle. Meaning: When the right Hand is in front the same goes for the right Foot. Normally people walk with their hands and feet counterbalance eachother. I would seperate them a bit further.

[Darknessseeker0]

Thanks Geddart! I fixed the arms among other things.

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/walkcycle.avi

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