Walk cycle woes

[Sneaky / Seriously Jo]

Due to my own idiocy I deleted the thread rather than a post I made since I failed to pay attention to what I was doing, so rekindled it.

Pte Jack, what I was trying to say before I was a such a spanner and deleted the thread by accident, I found out where I was going wrong, I had just done as you suggested and see from proper animations and why it was just looking rubbish, I wasn't animating the motion path as I went rather just doing the legs while stood still this caused me issues of the cycle being off, fleet sliding on the floor etc and looking bad.

I have the leg and poses sussed out though, and I am in the works of remaking my scene anyway since the lighting issues and volumetrics annoyed me some what plus using a stage save for the cycle before I import the model over.

My issue previously was the feet sliding and looking rubbish, now I found it was possible to fix that issue if you calculate the speed the character is ment to be going etc and all sorts of hassle than it being easier to just animate the thing properly, with the forward motion built in as I go, it should work fine for the base 4 poses and can then be copied to loop it or should be (in theory).

I had alot of practice the last near month with the poses, it's just getting the pelvic forward motion right to drive the poses forward, the feet should roll on and off from the spots and the keyframed sections should be more realistic and less bane of the jerky knee syndrom as I came to call it.

[Sneaky / Seriously Jo]

That is much better now, mistakes realised and fixed, at least I found where I went wrong to why the tutorials I watched just didn't seem like they fitted to what I was doing, should be able to turn this basic 4 pose into something alot better than just a basic raw sort of walk.

[Sneaky / Seriously Jo]

After hours last night picking over contstrained animations from alyx for reference of her animations as suggested and fixing my own set of novice skills I found a new problem

Not a problem as such as it sort of adds to the realism of a shoe cushioning.

The foot on the passing position sort of depresses into the floor then springs up and down again for the next pose

Any one have any idea on how to fix this? I tried to make the foot height the same across the poses to keep the feet level on the floor and altered the up down motion to compensate but this sort of springy bounce is a new one even for me, even looking over Alyx Vance the feet don't sort of bounce but they do stay level on the floor when walking.

EDIT

Managed to fix some of the issues although there is stil a tiny bit of bounce hopefully qwhen I next post in a few days I will have a working properly walk cycle

[R234]

You used one of Alyx's animations on Zoey? Look no further, I know what's going on:

Alyx is taller than Zoey, and as such has slightly longer legs. This means as the leg extends, her pelvis moves upwards a bit more. Since you most likely used a point constraint to transfer Alyx's pelvic movement to Zoey, the latter's pelvis moves up and down a bit too much for her legs' length as a result.

To fix this, you can experiment with the playhead filter: place the playhead on a frame where her feet are level with the ground, and select her pelvis' up/down position axis (can't remember off the top of my head which it is). then simply try applying a bit of playhead filter, see if that looks better. With trial and error you should be able to find a good balance.

EDIT:

Oh, and if the model's still rigged you might wanna lock her arms and legs to her pelvis before doing that, but I bet you could've guessed that one.

[Sneaky / Seriously Jo]

I think I made a messup on my explanation, I used Alyx as a pose reference, the issue was based on my attempt to replicate alyx's movements.

I also was copy pasting certain axis to keep the feet in one place to try to keep feet in one spot, since then however I found out my strides and poses were too far apart and I hope to plan the buy the animators survival kit at some point.

30 FPS is what I am working at and since I did some digging for an average walk cycle and made corrections to a new walk, I did however notice the height issue from Alyx to Zoey and thus I didn't when I tried out the help from Pte Jack and yourself decided not to use the constrained animations.

What I discovered was 30 FPS contact poses on 1 16 31 Frames etc, some basic things that are explained in the not purchased yet animation survival kit.

I hope to have a what I have done so far onto my you tube by the weekend since I am still tweaking what I have done now for 31 frames (1 second) it doesn't seem right to me but at least no springy feet, sliding feet and generally I think looks more fluid to my vision.

I did also fix my issues of no animation on top of the motion path I have the speed how I wanted. video to follow in a day or so since I am a bit busy at present.

[Sneaky / Seriously Jo]

I had a bit of spare time so managed to finished tweaking the very short walk cycle as a result I half speeded it down so you don't need to spam replay on you tube

I also managed to fix the springy feet it was because I had the lift off totally wrong I forgot about the toe bend while the foot moves up and instead I tried to only use foot rotation to do it and as a result of SFM not knowing what I am doing caused foot bouncing on spots, sliding etc.

Below are the two videos here is a list of the things in these you may not notice too well

Head Bob, Lean Forward, Pelvic & Hip Movements, Shoulders, Head / Neck Counter Rotation, Toe Bend.

All I need to do is add some arm movements which I shall at a later time I was focussing on realism look to a point of only arms need to be moving to sell it.

You may not see all of them in action but I figured out finally where things looked bad and touched them up, sadly though the biggest issue was the lift off than anything else

Thoughts and feed back please guys or any areas I can tweak slightly

30 FPS - I clipped out frame 0 my reference pose frame so now it rolls 0 to 30 evenly as the reference frame caused a few odd glitchs.

Full speed (One Second)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vury-KMc2LM

Half Speed (Two Seconds)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3fN6dejrM

I also used this for reference mostly for feet position how they rolled over each other to create the basic motions

Props to the original uploader of this reference tool as it has proved really usefull.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Veye-N0A4