Problems with a walk cycle

Hi I have created a charcter using flexrig and am half way through a project. I am trying to get the character to turn around and walk off. I have purchased several discs from blender, one is the animation fundamentals and am trying to follow the tutorial step by step because my original walk cycle i did was a bit naff. But after the character turns, takes his first step i tried to advance the play head to a new frame and copy and flip the paste as stated to change over the legs position from one foot to another to create the second contact point. But the character sort of spins around and face the wrong way and dont flip position as expected.

I hope i have explained it ok.

The file is too big to post so ill post a screen shot of before and after to see if it helps. any help would be greatly appreciated

.


pic 1: first step and i press first button to copy keyframes


pic 2: pressed the third button on an advanced frame to flip paste the keyframes and the tweening sort of rotates the character


pic3: the character faces the wrong way totally

mmmmmm never happened before so ive done something wrong somewhere

PLEASE please PLEASE help.

Many thanks

Don’t select all the controls when flipping the pose. Only the ones you want flipped. In this case, the IK feet, IK knee targets, the FK arms and shoulders.

By selecting the main torso (cube) control you are flipping the character’s hips 180 degrees. Only select the rotation controls. (circular widgets)

Hi thanks for the advice. I tried as suggested but the attached pics show the result…mmm
Any Ideas?



You said that you turned the character, then continued your walk, that suggests that you have rotation keyframes on some controls.

What is happening, I think, is you have moved your controls 180 degrees around your root bone. Without rotation the root bone, you are going to get weird behavior like this. I do NOT suggest that you move the root, however. Just be aware that you will have to manually pose the character from this point on. Flipping poses just will not work.

While you could rotate the the root, I would not suggest it unless you can somehow divide your animation with a camera cut. Then, just start fresh with your root pointing the direction the action will take place. You should be able to copy paste from that point.

Moving the root in an animation can cause some weirdness in the graph editor that will be hard to manage and could make it even more confusing.

Think of it as a minor annoyance. It’s actually harder to explain then anything.

Hope that helps.

Good luck!

Thanks DanPro…to the rescue again…lol. I sort of figured it out and you were spot on. i hadnt rotated the root completely. I am trying to do a fair few camera cuts to reposition the character at key points and im fairly happy with the result. Room for improvement and learning loads of ways to continue and just as many not too.

Thanks for the help.