New Walking Quiestion

[primemac]

I was looking at the walk cycle and its not smoth its some what robotic. Even choppy. What is the best way to smoth this out. I know the graph editor can do some smothing but there is not a lot of data on this.

The real question is how to get rid of that robot walking look to give a more
realistic walk.

[SplineGod]

can you post an example of the animation?

[primemac]

The test file. Light not needed right now.



</U>

[SplineGod]

You need to start with some kind of reference unless you know exactly how a camel walks. If you dont know the subject (the camel) very well you wont know how to animate it. Animation is converned with timing and weight. The timing is off on his gait. The legs are moving at the wrong times. The choppiness is also caused by incorrect timing.
I tend to break the animation down into discreet poses that happen at particular intervals in time. This is why reference is so important to determine how fast his gait is as well as when do the back legs move vs the front legs.
I usually start with creating the first pose and the last which are really the same since its a walk cycle. The difference is where the camel is located at each pose. Then I go and pose the camel halfway which would have the legs in the opposite arrangement from the start and finish poses. Then start filling in the rest of the poses. Once you have those roughed out you can start making the front and back end of the camel bounce as he walks as well as any side to side or twisting movements. Again you need to study some reference to understand those subtle movements.

This is essentially how I roughed this animation out:
http://www.3dtrainingonline.com/examples/runcycle.mov

[primemac]

Thank you for your input. I did take a week to look at how a camel walks and that is the funny part they walk like this. The front of the right side moves the same way as there back. They only change to a left side front to back side right when they are in a run or trotting. I also watched the animal planet 2 days agow they talked about the camels of the world and again I watched there walk and again strange as it sounds that is what they do. Now if the camel I have is in a run or trotting then yes they run like any other 4 leg animal. Strange ah lol..

I did find that my time was off a little of the Y and cleaned it up I also used
TCB spline +1 on the way up on the y and TCB spline -1 on the way down and used Linear on the Bace for the ground. That cleaned things up nicely.

By the way you made that class of "Foundations of Character Rigging?

[SplineGod]

What I would do is find some good footage of a camel walking.
A good place to start is Edward Muybridges book Animals in Motion.
Load the video footage or scanned images into layout behind your rig and animate on top of it.

I did create that DVD :)

[primemac]

I do have a strange question. When I have the modle move the blue lines falow is that a normal setup? It basicly is the nulls controling each foot but the main model box remains at is original location. I ask to make certen I did not miss something in that DVD.

[SplineGod]

Those blue lines indicate the separate IK chains.

[primemac]

lol yea I understand that but is that normal to have the model box remain.. Granted I can see that moving the box does make the path of the model move but I am just making certen I am not missing anything.

[SplineGod]

It depends on whether the camel is being moved only by using bones or if you are also moving the body of the camel itself. :)

[primemac]

After some time looking at this I do not think 28 is right. I would agree but the model just does not look right.Even trying the changes for the tention of speed it is not clear how to do that but that still did not fix the problems I see. I am gessing that I will have to solve this on my own but I am use to that. The clip you showed is a dog like but it is running and the walking I see is not right eather. I would agree but I watched the video again and there is something missing. Just in the walk. I will get back to you if I get this fixed. I like when no one has the answer to my questions at times. I usualy fix it myself and is better than gessing. But then again that is the art of animation gessing the solution baced on what you see.

thanks though

[SplineGod]

Sometimes theres no easy or short answer. The key is in finding good reference to work from and lots of time. :)

[primemac]

tell me about it lol. I get the impression that each creature has its own walk style. I did expect this to be as complex as it is but what a trip. I just about got it fixed now. I have to do some small changes but its about done now.
I did watch your UV cd/dvd I have 3 to watch left. I have to say wow that was helpfull and cleared things up a lot.

I am a exp with Adobe photoshop so that was not a problem to go through I did some blending and some extra warping to get a better skin texture bump map. Time to finish them last 3.

[SplineGod]

Cool, glad those videos helped :)

[primemac]

Hi. I am a little lost hear. I got the models walking but when the leg gose forward the leg snaps out and the null is in place but no the leg ow talk about pulling out of your bone. the back part is good. Any ideas?

[SplineGod]

Hard to say without seeing your rig.
Usually if you get popping its because you dont have enough prebend in the bones to indicate how they should bend with IK applied. Also increase goal strength. You might also try adjusting joint stiffness or setting rotation limits

[primemac]

hi there SplineGod yea I did all of that before I sent this out. I decided to go back and check the bones and did a shift K on them again and found for what ever reason lightwave did not save the changes I did last time using shift K. Good thing I save on changes or I would have a head ake. Once I went back to the weight setup and redone the shift K then setup the IK agan things started to look the way it should have. Not my first IK setup but first time lightwave did not save the changes I made.

After doing them fixes I was looking at it and turned out to be clean. No problems now. I have a note for yea. I did some long research on the camles and when I set the model to 30 per step it looked more real. Having the IK work the way it should Priceless lol...

Yea I have foundations for character rigging. That is one of the reasons why I was like huh when the rig did not work the first time lol. I have to say that uv setup is so cool. my model's that use it look so real.

that for the help.