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shooterstache
shooterstache
Inspiring
June 24, 2018
Answered

Limiting Walk cycle head movements

  • June 24, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 1171 views

Having fun getting into walk cycles finally. The only thing I can't figure out is how to limit head movement during cycles. During the normal walk i'm OK but any other styles my head and neck are all over the place. Is there a way to fix this?

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Correct answer KJerryK

I took a look at your puppet. I don't have a definitive answer to your issues, but do have a few suggestions. It is probably a good idea for each body profile to have its own head group. You could use the same head setup, but put a copy in each body group. That way you are less likely to get the strange head movement. The Maddy puppet at Character Animator Examples would be a good example. Then using just a single walk behavior would offer more consistency when the left and right walk profiles are visible. I would put the walk behavior at the level above the three profiles. Once that is accomplished the dragging feet can be addressed by adjusting the location of the walk handles, and by playing with the walk behavior parameters. For instance, increasing the walk strength and decreasing the stride length might solve the shuffling problem. Sometimes a puppet's walk is sensitive to exactly where the handles are located, as well as the geometry of the legs and arms. Shifting the handles just a little bit can often make a significant difference in some puppets.

I hope this helps you.

5 replies

KJerryK
KJerryK
Legend
June 25, 2018

When you say the head is all over the place, do you mean it is flopping, warping, separating from the body, or what? Can you post a screen cap of your puppet and the rigging you are using, or a video of what you see? How does your puppet/rigging compare with examples such as the Walkbot puppet?

shooterstache
shooterstacheAuthor
Inspiring
June 25, 2018

I just tried to record and wow thats a whole different problem. It plays back completely differently then recorded if I try to do multiple walk styles in one scene. I recorded two separate videos.

Regular walk (not bad): Scene - Jameis Walk.mp4 - Google Drive 

Slump (major head disconnect): Scene - Jameis Winston slump.mp4 - Google Drive

Puppet: Jameis Winston.puppet - Google Drive

I think one of my problems is I have two walk behaviors. My walk right is at the character behavior and my walk left is at the left profile (actually rt profile) because it wouldn't let me tag handles (neck, knee, ect.) on a 2nd walk behavior at the character level (i make a 2nd walk behavior put I can't manually assign the right profile tags cos its already tagged to the left on the original walk behavior.)

Also you can see both walks look like the character is dragging his feet, is there a way to adjust this? My stride length is already up to 750%. Elbows look backward in the slump as well, enough though I have sticks on all arms.


Thanks in advanced.

KJerryK
KJerryKCorrect answer
Legend
June 26, 2018

I took a look at your puppet. I don't have a definitive answer to your issues, but do have a few suggestions. It is probably a good idea for each body profile to have its own head group. You could use the same head setup, but put a copy in each body group. That way you are less likely to get the strange head movement. The Maddy puppet at Character Animator Examples would be a good example. Then using just a single walk behavior would offer more consistency when the left and right walk profiles are visible. I would put the walk behavior at the level above the three profiles. Once that is accomplished the dragging feet can be addressed by adjusting the location of the walk handles, and by playing with the walk behavior parameters. For instance, increasing the walk strength and decreasing the stride length might solve the shuffling problem. Sometimes a puppet's walk is sensitive to exactly where the handles are located, as well as the geometry of the legs and arms. Shifting the handles just a little bit can often make a significant difference in some puppets.

I hope this helps you.

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