Walk cycle animation

I have been attempting some walk cycles and trying to figure out how to get them to look natural.
I cant figure out how to make them look less stiff and robotic. Here is a 5 second sample done with a make human character I render this in cycles. Where can I find any good tutorials? thanks in advance.

Google walk cycle, switch to images, find an image that shows: Contact, Up, Down, Passing Poses. Take a look at the pages those illustrations come from. You should be able to find a good explanation of what to do.

Now, the main problem with your robotic MakeHuman character is his torso is not animated. When walking the hips rotate, the shoulders rotate, and the body moves up and down.

Walk cycles have been around since the beginning of animation, so most of the best advice tends to focus on hand drawn animation, rather than computer graphics. Since the information is directly applicable to CG walk cycles, there aren’t too many dedicated CG walkcycle tutorials. They really aren’t needed.

Thank you I will try that. I get a lot of snapping when I rotate the hips and shoulder but I image if the rotation is subtle it will smoothe out. thank you again I will keep working at it.

Hmm… snapping shouldn’t be an issue with a simple walk cycle. Did you use rigify to rig your character, or is this a rig from MakeHuman?

rigify rig i will post another video with the additions

Too much popping and it feels robotic.

Yes, too much popping, that shouldn’t be there. The popping is a sign of a problem with either the rig or the animation. Since you used rigify, I doubt it’s the rig’s problem, so maybe the animation. My first thought after reading everything is that maybe some animation curves got set to constant, and not linear or bezier. To see if this is your problem, select all keyframes in the dopesheet, hit the t-key and choose ‘bezier’ from the pop up menu’s left side. If this doesn’t fix the popping, then most likely someone will have to take a look at the file as it could be any number of problems. Another cause of the popping could be improper fk/ik switching of the arm that waves, cause that’s where it’s most noticeable at.

If you don’t understand what I mean by fk/ik switching, then this could explain a lot of the popping we are seeing. I noticed the feet sliding, which tells me you aren’t operating the legs using IK. Look up Forward Kinematics (fk) and Inverse Kinematics (ik) to understand what they are. Generally moving walkcycle like yours would be animated in IK mode so there is no foot slippage and the legs move smoothly. Arms in a walkcycle, are generally animated in fk mode so they are smooth.

Hope this helps,
Randy

To expand on what Orinoco said about animating the torso, this page shows a simple stick figure which illustrates it. The hips and shoulders rotate in two ways. In the front view you can see they rotate up/down, and in the top view they rotate fore/aft.
https://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/walking/walking.htm

Steve S

I used the basic poses for a walk cycle I checked the interpolation and just cant get passed the robotic look in the walk I used the rigify rig as I am attempting to learn some basic animation skills. maybe it is the timing in the walk and that every thing happens on the same key frames here is another sample this time it is just a static walk cycle. Maybe I,m over thinking it .

It’s better.

The torso is still being held too upright, people lean into their walk, and the leg motion is jerky. There is not much up and down motion (there is a bit, it’s better than it was) and I don’t think the torso is swaying side to side at all. When some people walk, they set their feet down underneath their center of mass, sort of like walking a line in a field sobriety test, other people let their weight shift from side to side as each leg takes their weight in turn.

But the thing to work on next is to get the legs swinging smoothly.

It appears that your character’s rise and fall could be causing some of your snapping. He appears to be at his high position for most of the cycle and momentarily snap downward and then back up. Perhaps try removing some of the torso control keys in the Dope sheet?

Hi Newart2000,
Good that you spotted the absence of overlap and the robotic feel. Its partly because you have a pretty stiff torso where as the hips arent rotating at all.
Here’s a walk cycle i did in half hour to get my point across. The walk cycle has just the keyframes blocked in. Its no way near finish, but it get the main feel of the walk across.

Cheers,

Thanks everyone for your help I’m still working at getting a more realistic look to my walk cycle. After a few tweaks and adding a little rotation here is another sample of the walk with animation for the stride added to the root