Advanced Animation / Project 1: Walk Animation

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Date (Week 5-6)
Janaan Ahmed (0353333) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Advanced Animation
Project 1: Walk & Jump Animation

Lectures

TOPIC 5 : BODY MECHANICS IN A WALK CYCLE

Walk Cycle
  • Technique: Pose to Pose
  • Poses: contact (extreme), up, down, passing (breakdown)
  • Timing: 2 steps (24 sec) for natural walk

How to achieve fluidity + flexibility
  1. Get the right pose + right timing (pose to pose)
  2. Get the flexibility right (straight ahead)
Blender
  • Right arm and left arm FK/IK switch to FK
  • Set contact poses (Extremes)
  • Hip slightly down and forward
  • If foot moves 1 unit, hip moves 0.5 (contact poses)
  • Set breakdown poses (passing)
Fig 1: Ankle rotation accuracy


Instructions

Fig 2.1: Module Information Booklet

Fig 2.2: Project 1 Instructions

PROJECT 1: WALK ANIMATION

There are 2 parts to this project:
  • Vanilla Walk Cycle
  • Attitude Walk
As we learned from Animation Fundamentals, we follow this sequence of mapping out the key poses for a basic walk cycle:
  • Extremes: Contact, Passing
  • Breakdown: Up, Down
Fig 2.3: Walk Cycle (Animation Survival Kit)

Seeing as the hips are the main force driving the the movement, we first start by adjusting that. Following that come the legs, and the hinge movement. After getting the pose right, keyframes are set. 

Fig 2.4: Pasting flipped pose for consistency of alternating motion

Fig 2.5: Posing foot

Once the basic motion is done, we then map out the secondary action. This means animating the arms (and consecutively the wrists). For the simplicity of the exercise, minute finger movements are not animated. The arms are set to FK from the FK/IK switch. 

Fig 2.6: FK/IK switch for arm

Fig 2.7: Rotating wrists (secondary action)

In a similar manner, and by also utilising what we learned from the posing exercise, I then made the attitude walk. This time I included more subtle movements by playing around with more body controls, and then adjusting the graph editor to get the easing right. I decided to give snow a laid-back walk. 

FINAL OUTCOME:


Feedback

-

Reflection

Experience

Animating on Blender (or any 3D software in this context) was a little different and a bit hard for me to grasp. Moreover, the graph editor is a little confusing to understand at first, but overall a walk cycle seems the best and most fundamental to get the hang of animating on a 3D software. I'll be honest though I do wish there was an onion skin function.

Observation

In all honesty I quite struggled to move the limbs and joints of the rig in a way that didn't make the character look distorted. And therefore I tried to not overcomplicate things by adding extra details (although that would have made the walk more smoother I suppose). 

Findings

Seems to me that the key is to get your poses and silhouette right so that the software interpolation creates smooth inbetweens. I still am just getting the hang of things for now.


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