Current Position of Puppet After Keyboard Walk

[Crewman1]

How do you determine the current position of the puppet after a Keyboard Input Walk?  I only have an X Position keyframe at the beginning of the walk.  The puppet after the walk is standing in the middle of the screen but when I want to create a new X Position Keyframe, Ch doesn’t show me the current position, it just shows me the beginning X Position  Any help is appreciated.  As a side note, Position based Walk doesn't work well for my puppets.  

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

There are two approaches that work fairly well, and one that does not. (Yep, you guessed it, you are doing the one that does not!)

Approach 1: Set the walk body speed to zero, so when walking the puppet does not actually move. Then use puppet Position X keyframing to make the puppet move, synchronized with the arrow key recording.

Approach 2: Set the walk to Position based walking instead of arrow keys. Then use keyframes to adjust the Position property of the *walk behavior* (NOT Position X of the Transform behavior on the puppet). This property is only visible after Position based walking has been set I think. This works out the puppet walk speed and direction for you automatically based on the Position value.

[Crewman1]

thanks a bunch!

[mariusw30260965]

Hi Alan,

when using position based walk behavior, I run into trouble, when standing still. The puppet has a left/right profile for walking but when standing still, it starts to rapidly change profile views after 5 seconds of standstill. Looks like the timeline-parameter is fluctuating a little bit. Is there a fix to that (damping, maybe?)?

Thanks a lot in advance

[alank99101739]

No idea to be honest. I don't use the walk behavior much myself. What I would suggest trying is removing the Walk Behavior from the puppet and replay the scene - does it work better then? Basically try removing individual things to see if you can narrow down what is causing the problem. E.g. is it dangles or something playing up, or the closeness of handles, etc. It most likely is the walk behavior, but you can waste a lot of time if it isn't! ;-). Then try removing handles, profiles, etc inside CH, then undo to put them back.. So I usually make a change, try again, undo, repeat, until I feel confident which part is causing the problem.

Another thing to try is using a different puppet (e.g. one of the Adobe provided puppets). If you can repeat with one of them, its easier to create a new project and ship them a copy explaining what you did so they can take a look. But basically the simpler the project you can create showing the problem, the more likely they can track down the problem.

Oh, another one, export the puppet, create a new project, import it, try to repeat the problem. Then you have a nice fresh project without all the history (and potential file corruptions etc).

Why does it work okay for 5 seconds then play up? Very strange.