I did this over the course of a day (as in the parts of that day I had free!) using one of the free rigs at www.creativecrash.com (formerly highend3d ). http://www.creativecrash.com/xsi/downlo ... er-rigs/c/

What I struggled with most was trying to get the rig to move along at the right speed to match the strides. I'm guessing the footfalls need work (perhaps they need to snap down to the ground faster). Also, should I have set the movement of the rig before I animated the legs rather than the other way round? Luckily, the default setup for this scene has a floor without any reference points so the "sliding" isn't that obvious.

PS: watch on Youtube for a larger image/smoother playback.

Comments/critique would be appreciated! Thanks.

Hi Jason,

for this sort of thing its much easier if you post a quicktime, its really hard to frame by frame youtube.

But it looks pretty good

Why were you moving the rig forward, there is a walk in place system that works well, but it depends on where you want to take it.

I can recommend the animators survival book (Williams), it does all kinds of walks and weights of the character. its for trad 2d work, but it really translates over well.

http://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

Cheers
Terry

Or if you've got $1039.82 hidden somewhere and feel an uncontrollable urge to spend it , you could go for the 16-DVD box-set Richard Williams Animation Masterclass - "The Animator's Survival Kit – Animated", as described here...

But I guess, Letterbox is right, the book is probably a better idea!!!

Yes. Don't animate walk cycles 'in place', because:
You'll just get wrong preview.
You still need to provide movement of whole rig at some point, that is hard to do when you start from 'in place'. Opposite is much easier to do.
XSI tools, such as 'deform motion', likes real walk, not 'in place'. If you want to go further, you can easily create your own deform motion system, by using constraints to surface, with nurbs surface as a 'carpet'. There you still need real walk.

If you want to preview real walk, so it's looking like in place, just take one orthographic view, usually it's left/right, link it's camera z position to whatever is equivalent of upper body controller's z position.

Cheers for the tips guys. I do indeed have that book and very good it is too. (Didn't have to hand for this little animation though). The motion for walking isn't constant is it? But do most people base their walk cycles on a constant travel speed for ease of creation?

Terry, just in case you wanted to take another look, theres a poorly converted quicktime file here!:

As far as I know, walk cycles are most frequent in games, where you export character's walk in 'in place' mode, together with info about global motion, so engine can play with that.
You can always leave some controllers in constant motion, but animate their child objects. For example, with XSI biped, upper body in constant motion, but hip controller creates offsets.

Anyway, character that walks in exactly the same cycles, doesn't look realistic.

Slightly different take on the bot walk. From scratch again, this time I tried to match the rig motion with foot motion, so it travels forwards and the feet sit on the ground. Again, only 29 frames looped, so the transition seems a little jerky (at least in the side view - could be I missed a frame in the rush...)

Hi Jason,

yes, i see what you mean, but...its definitely got a bit more "attitude", the eyes head eyebrows...

Looking forward to the next one

Cheers
Terry

Yeah, I was going for a more angry walk! I think the front view looks ok, but the side view, not so good. Will try for something a little different on the next one.