Walk cycle Animation Test

Walk cycle animation test with the fantastic Flex Rig
from CGCookie. Get it here

Thanks go to Nathan Vegdahl, Beorn Leonard, and Jonathan Williamson and David Revoy.

Critics welcome and encouraged.

*updates posted. see end of post."

You’ve got some nice swing in the arms and I like the snap in the feet. It feels like the torso needs a little more up and down motion though.

Nice test…the arms seem to swing a bit too far, a smaller arc might be good …

Add a frame stamp next time…that will help get you better feedback. Also go ahead and give us 3 or 4 repeats…easier for us to check out your hard work.

good job on him and the lights are outstanding

Yes, you are right. Because of that the weighting is bad and I think the lighting is not really appropriate.
Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, I think the arm swing is a bit exagerated and the weighting is not 100% right.
Will post some updates and new body mechanics tests.

Thanks for your feedback

^^^ Amen brother!!

In general the main issue is with the hips and torso. You’re almost there, but fine tuning the up and down motion will help reduce the weightless feeling the character currently has.
Also, the subtle body motion doesn’t seem to match the extreme motion of the arms and feet. At the moment the arms are swinging in an extreme way and the feet are taking really high steps. This is fine, but it isn’t reflected in the body animation, which is quite subtle. Maybe choose whether to do an exaggerated walk (and adjust the torso) or a subtle walk (and adjust the hands and feet).

Also, the motion of the feet is a little jerky around their contact with the ground.You probably want to check what the curves are doing there.

Nice test. Keep it up!

Thank you so much for reporting the issues.
I’ll put in a frame counter and work on the hips and torso or maybe reduce the exageration on Arms and Feet.
Will post some updates.

I really appreciate your feedback.
Thanks again

Updates on the Walkcycle.
Actually I changed a lot. Now with framecounter
Have a look!

Walkcycle looping

Walkcycle - one cycle only

Side view loop

Front view loop

Feedback welcome

1 little advice - do not forget to anomate hand and fingers. In first look it may not seems necesary but it can make your animation more lively

it would help if the loops were longer, much longer, go ahead a loop a good min.

Right now his weight comes down at the same time as foot, I’d offset the action of his weight coming down by about three frames so his foot comes down and THEN his weight shifts down. Looking good though! :slight_smile:

Thanks for the advice. will do that next time.

Yes you are right. The weight still is not ok. I’ll look into that. Thanks for your advice.

I agree with the weight shift comments, but I can also see that it’s improved since your last version.
Some additional comments:

The side to side on the body seems too extreme. I think this has to do with a lack of animation in the upper body. IT should be rotating counter to the hips to keep the shoulders from moving side to side in such an extreme way.

The hips themselves need to rotate on all 3 axes. At the moment I don’t see any Z rotation at all. The hips should swing toward the contact foot. This could help fix some of your knee pops.

The feet don’t seem to move at all in the X axis. They should have a little swing to them as they come forward into the contact.
Also, footsteps tend to be closer together when walking than when standing. It’s a stylistic thing, as some characters walk with wide footsteps, but I wonder if the current position is intentional, or if it’s just the default.

It’s great to see someone taking the time to work on the fundamentals. Keep it up!

Thanks for the critique.
I’ll work on the topics you mentioned and post updates.
Also some work has to be done on the Body Jump I posted.
At the moment I’m also doing some basic tests on bouncing balls and ball with tail.

I listened to the interview you did with Andrew. A lot of useful information there.
Actually I’m thinking/planning of enrolling to AM or Jason Ryan’s iAnimate but the cost is really high!!!

Thanks again

Some new Walkcycle tests.

Before working on my main Walkcycle I decided to do a few tests on Walkcycles.
Had to understand the hip movements so I did a rough 16 Frames (Should be on 24 frames!) Walkcycle with a Ballrig.
Did the planning in 2D and then tried to transfer it in 3D in Blender.
Hip rotation on the 3D-Stuff is only on y and z axis. (maybe there should also be some x rotation!?)
This helped to get rid of the annoying knee pops. I didn’t use squash and stretch on the feet!

Ballrig downloaded from Blenswap by punkramenaz. Check it out: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/67014

2D Animation done in Flipbook

3D Ballrig Walkcycle

Critique welcome and encouraged. Thanks.

Notes on the 3d walk: It’s missing the X rotation on the hips (as you guessed). This should be subtle, but should still be there.
Also, there is a lack of side to side motion in the overall body. The body mass should be over the contact foot to ensure balance. For example, on frame 11 the character would fall over.
This means that the footsteps should be closer together on the X axis (as I mentioned previously). The faster you go the more your footsteps tend to fall into line; it cuts down on violent side to side motion.

In general, this is the most important thing to think about in physical animation; what the weight is doing.
(there’s also attitude and acting, but that’s another topic. best to work on body mechanics first.)

Great exercises you’re doing. Keep it up!

… I’m doing walks right now too…they are tricky to get right. In a vanilla walk anyway. I’m not very good but I’m hip deep in this study right now. I too am mostly finding it very hard to wrap my head around a walk and get it right.

So I think you are doing a good start…but you need to go back and check your process. Your correct, it needs this study but get a video reference or make one of a simple walk, nothing fancy or too extreme. Use that as your guide and you’ll see what is up and where the problems are. Remember, walks are hard to get right without a lot of very slow and hard work. Take your time to get this right and anything else you animate will become that much easier for you.

A lot of the reference I find on the net is for a cartoon walk…they show the important poses in a cartoon extreme, which is not good when you want a simple vanilla walk to check that you have a smooth simple walk. The examples that I see the most show an exaggerated ‘down’ to demonstrate the difference. It makes it clear for beginners to see…and also creates a problem if you try to match that down pose.

The chart below show the timing is on 16 frames,NOTE: the down is way too low…it was drawn that way just to show the contrast from the contact pose to passing pose.


Your walk

Your toes don’t push off the ground. They should be bent flat to the ground and stick to the ground for frames 01, 02, 03, 04, 05…then the toe comes off the ground…that is the push that moves forward. This is why your feet look ‘floppy’

Your passing position, isn’t leaning forward

also an orthographic side view would be better than a perspective side view.

Go ahead and move your walk across the camera…you’ll find it easier to spot problems…walk cycles are not easy to see where your problems will be. Do the walk cycle after you move him with his walk.

I am using a video reference that shows a real walk…much easier especially as a make it my background and then just need to mimic it to get my timing and spacing correct.

I know its frustrating, I too am going through this. I hope you’ll keep going and work on this. I know I am frustrated with how hard this simple animation is.

Update on Walkcycle. 24 frames now.

Thanks so much for your feedback. I worked a lot on hip rotation and controlling these knee pops.
This one is still not perfect. But learned a lot doing this exercice. Want to go back on a complete character walk.
Maybe I should check out Beorn Leonard’s fundamental series on CGCookie.

Front view

Side view

Perspective view

Critique welcome