Need help with a Walk Cycle project ...

[Tristamus]

Heya joker....

your lucky cause ive done about 4 walk cycles now and i think im getting the jist of it :D

Okay so, you want an animation to cycle infinitely while a camera rotates around it? thats very simple, heres how ya do it..

1) In your walking animation, make sure your FIRST FRAME and LAST FRAME are IDENTICAL.

2) in the graph editor (window>animation editors>graph editor), take all your keys that are sitting on your last frame of your walking animation (remember, they should be the same as the first keyframe), and then go to view>infinity.

3) after going to view>infinity, click on curves>post infinity>cycle with offset.

that should do it =)

remember it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure your first keyframes sitting on frame 1 are the same as the ones sitting on the last frame of your animation (whatever its sitting on, 30, 40, etc).

[J0K3R 3D]

No answer =\ ....

guess there is no way of doing this? :sad:

[J0K3R 3D]

Heya joker....

your lucky cause ive done about 4 walk cycles now and i think im getting the jist of it :D

Okay so, you want an animation to cycle infinitely while a camera rotates around it? thats very simple, heres how ya do it..

1) In your walking animation, make sure your FIRST FRAME and LAST FRAME are IDENTICAL.

2) in the graph editor (window>animation editors>graph editor), take all your keys that are sitting on your last frame of your walking animation (remember, they should be the same as the first keyframe), and then go to view>infinity.

3) after going to view>infinity, click on curves>post infinity>cycle with offset.

that should do it =)

remember it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure your first keyframes sitting on frame 1 are the same as the ones sitting on the last frame of your animation (whatever its sitting on, 30, 40, etc).

AWESOME! I knew it was going to be something simple, but I could not find it anywhere online (maybe I was just searching wrong). Thanks a bunch!

[donvella]

Howdy, im also doing a walk cycle at the moment and im having a little bit of trouble. At the moment i have done the walk cycle and it works on the spot, when i move the main character controller i then have to counter animate the legs (which i find odd by double handling but there must be an easier way... however) that looks fine now, i have both the feet and body controller synced up its just i dont want to have to do this for every 2 meters he walks.

How do i loop this walk cycle (for the legs) while i move the body controller accross the floor. Keep in mind the feet controllers are all using attributes (wire parameters) to animate with, so the feet controllers just move along the x while all the attributes are doing the work (lift heel, bend toes etc).

Im using max 2009 if that helps with your description.

Cheers
Donvella

[J0K3R 3D]

Hey Don,

Im kind of confused with your question. From what I am understanding though, you dont have a handle for the entire rig. Most character rigs have a handle or control at the bottom of it that that is parented to all the other controls and moves the entire rig. With that you can animate the cycle, then animate the rig control sliding around and make it look like hes moving about.

I could just be misreading your entire post but it seems the problem is youre trying to animate the characters actual positioning, with his "body control" at its waist. Thats perfectly fine, however for loops it wouldnt be practical for ya.

For Maya id just parent all the characters controls to a main "rig control" and its feet but youre using 3ds Max ... its probably done a different way there =\

Probably didnt help much but I hope I cleared some of it up. Sorry if I misunderstood the problem though. If I did could ya simplify a little? :)

[donvella]

Your close mate, I have a main control, which is what im translating his movement across. The walk cycle is working well synced with the main character movement, however there seems to be no way to repeat this process. I have tried a "relative repeat" process in the curve editor and have no luck with repeating all the frames i have created exactly but translating it across the x axis (forward) so that i get a character to continue walking from spot A to spot B (10 meters away) - given that each walk cycle is 2meters. I dont have any foot sliding (which was the first issue with the main control moving faster then the legs touching the ground) but however when i try 'relative repeat', 'loop out' or any of these functions in the curve editor, i have no luck - the animation seems to expotentially change to the point where his legs are just going awhol and the body control goes its own way.

This is all being animated along the x, and i havent even got to translating this accross the y yet, before i get to doing different directions i just want to be able to create a walk cycle i can just move around the scene...

Cheers
Vella

[thelostcucumber]

What usually looks best for me is to copy the cycle like you said, then tweak whatever is offset ("running away" from the other body parts) by hand in the curve editor. That way it will also look less like a cycle in the end.

[donvella]

cheers for your reply, for anyone reading this having the same issue I have resolved the problem.

The problem was My body controller wasnt linear, which means each step was counter animated to work with the body controller, which expotentially changes along the timeline, this is not an effective method.

Solution, Create the cycle, match the velocity of the body control to the feet (using a box as a measure or a marker or a clone of the foot control for exact measure).
Once they match without foot sliding then you can translate your body control along the x (or y depends on which way your animating) and then in the curve editor create a repeat cycle for your body control.
The walk cycle can use a relative repeat cycle aswell however, in my case i use the dopesheet and or copy keys accross the timeline because the first 10 frames are my Default Pose and wont work with relative repeat, unless anyone knows how to disregard the first 10 frames, because that would be handy.

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