Make character walk into a different direction

[cx0r]

Hi guys.

I made a few characters and they can walk from left to right with the arrowkeys.

but how can i make him walk the other way?

greetings, cris

[KJerryK]

The easiest way to get started is to look at an example puppet that can walk different ways. If you go to Character Animator Examples  and download the Maddy puppet, that will help.

[cx0r]

thank you.

i already made my character walk forward and it can walk backwards.

so when i add a right and left profil (which i only have for my face right now) it will automatically walk with the left profil instead of walking backwards?
and Maddy has no bones attached to her. thats quit confusing me, because i rigged my other characters.

greetings

[KJerryK]

If you follow the Maddy template, you will also need a stationary view. The Maddy frontal is visible until the left or right arrows are pushed. The arrows trigger the walking views. The walking views are each rigged to walk individually. You could use a duplicate of the right view in place of the Maddy frontal. The duplicate should not be rigged to walk, then it will show only until an arrow is pushed.

As an alternate way to do this you can try using a swap set for the three views. This may provide more alternatives, such as not having the puppet start walking immediately when turned to the opposite direction.

As for when to use bones, it all depends on the puppet. Try different rigging until you get the motion you want.

[cx0r]

so if i give her right under the layer "Maddy" A Front, right and left profile, the program will make hey automatically able to walk in the right and left direction with the arrow keys, changing the view?

[cx0r]

i still dont get it,

there is no option to walk into the left direction.

it autmatically seems like it only walks to the right.

i made the puppet just like maddy

[KJerryK]

Can you provide more details, such as a screen cap of the rig panel for your puppet. Also at what level do you have the walk behavior, and is each left and right profile rigged for walking? Also are the profiles tagged appropriately?

If you want to link to a *.puppet file I'll take a look at it.

[alank99101739]

I agree with Jerry - I would be checking out the tags.

I am not a walk expert, but I remember a recent tips and tricks video saying something like "Walk behavior defaults to the first visible view, but uses the Left Profile and Right Profile tags to replace the default". I had assumed it was necessary to tag the forward profile as "Frontal" that was not actually used. If I remember correctly what mattered was to have the 3 profiles as children of the same node (.e.g the root of the puppet), with the frontal view first and visible, and the left and right profiles next, hidden, and tagged with Left/Right Profile tags. The Walk behavior then looked for those tags, replacing the default with the Left Profile or Right Profile. If you don't have a frontal, then it probably just uses the profile displayed. If you want the other profile selected, you have to both get the puppet hierarchy correct and tag it so CH understands the hierarchy correctly. (If you use the right layer names it will add the tags for you automatically - but it can get confused so checking the tags by hand is important.)

So when you look at Maddy, make sure you understand both the puppet layer hierarchy and the tags.

It was a little confusing because there are quarter profile tags as well because CH reuses two of the "Head Turner" tags also for walk direction. So if you want head turning with walk, I think you had to put the Head Turner behavior per turn profile (if you wanted to use it) so it did not accidentally pick up the walk profiles as head turn profiles. I think the next release has quarter profile walks as well, so maybe all of the tags will be used in the future.

[cx0r]

Thanks guys for the quick answers.

i found my problem. and got another one. now it wont walk at all

so this is what maddys "views and handels" look like in CH

and this is what mine looks like

its seems like CH does not recognize my handels somehow.

i did create them and tagged them correctly i guess.

i'll upload my file tomorrow.

greetings

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

I think you are missing the tags on the top level profiles... oh! See you called them "Right Profil" (no "e" on the end). So that layer will not have been autotagged. Instead if found your head profiles and thought they were your body profiles! Then it looked for all the handles under the profile (which is Left Profil/Head/Left Profile in your case - a part of the head). Your handles are not under head (of course) so CH did not find them.

If you tag your "Right Profil" layer near the top with the "Right Profile" tag (in the Tags section of the puppet properties panel) and do the same for the left profile it will hopefully start working. (Or rename your layers so the autotagging kicks in - but that may loose any rigging under those layers.)

[cx0r]

it did finally work!!!

oh wow thank you guys so much for your help!!

but i got one problem left; my charakter wont move in the screen, it just walks on the same spot..

[alank99101739]

There is a "Body Speed" ("Walk Strength"? - something like that) property in the walk behavior. However, if you are doing normal editing and recording you will quickly discover its a pain in the neck. It is not intuitive in how it works. It will walk whenever "turned on". So if you pause the play-head over a section where its turned on, it will keep walking even though the play-head is paused, plus if you rewind the puppet will NOT move the puppet back to the old position.

It is great for simple recordings and live streaming. I think its painful for normal edit cycles. Instead I would consider using Position X/Y transforms and blends to move the character. You can record a take for the destination position, then use the "blend" handles (top left and right corners of the recording) to blend from the old location to the new location. Then the puppet position will obey the timeline play head. (It will keep moving legs unexpectedly, but it will stay in the scene.) Its worth trying to really understand.

[cx0r]

ok i got it with the blending modes to transform the position X. thanks for the tip, and i thought you couldn't do that. even if its pretty much work to do so, and i would more like to work with automatic keyframes....but it works.

but it seems like i couldn't really synchronise the walk with the blend of the position.

so i recorded the starting position X to outside of the screen and walked with the body speed into the screen. this worked pretty fine for me.

my goal is it to make a fully animated cartoon with a story. they wont walk that much, but they'll have many emotions, mimic's and gesture. but the walk was pretty important. because i didnt get them to walk first, i thought im gonna make the walkingcycle with the blending mode step for step. well that would have been a lot of work, so im pretty happy now my character can walk with a click. 🙂

but now i have to edit again a couple of other characters to "maddy-mode" so they can walk too -_- xD

so i think the framing of X in combination with bodyspeed will work best for me. but i will have to plan every movment in the current scene from the beginning, because with this tatic i guess i'll have to animate every position first in one take, so my character won't jump ...(?)

greetings

[alank99101739]

I cheated. I zoom in on the torso when they are walking so you just see the torso bobbing up and down. Its not great, but I avoided using walk behaviors back when I was starting.

Friendship (Extra Ordinary, Episode 1) - YouTube

I have since learnt the 3 quarters profile view is more common, then you don’t have to do so many camera shots. But its been a fun learning experience. I must admit I more tinker than do “real” projects.

[cx0r]

haha i liked your cartoon and i see what you did there! haha nice

there are many things that i would have done different.

but i liked the backround really much and the dangle of the hairs.

and the story 🙂

is the backround created in a 3d program i guess?
greetings

[KJerryK]

If you have After Effects, you might try bringing in your scene via Dynamic Link, after doing the walking and talking in CH. In AE you can key frame all the transform behaviors. Also, you can add as many instances of the puppet as you want, and can make the puppet walk in two directions.

[alank99101739]

Yes, the backgrounds are 3D. I am not much of an artist. I tried to draw a first background and almost gave up on the whole project then and there! So yes, I bought some assets from the Unity store then loaded them into Unity 3D and took some screenshots from different angles.

I think the important thing is to work out your own “style”. You don’t have to follow what everyone else does. Its a matter of working out the feel your want for your own work and then carrying it through. I tried drawing backgrounds (they looked terrible!). I tried photos but because I did full frontal shots of the puppets (which in hindsight was probably the wrong choice) but I needed consistent images from both directions - I could not just reuse the one background image for a long scene, so I create lots and lots of short scenes (which does take longer). My first episode I wrote out as a document each scene, each camera angle, each background required, each line of dialogue and wrote it all down. That helped me plan out all the work. I experimented with each bit I needed, I showed bits to others. So I may do things differently a second time myself, but I am going to complete the series in the style it was started with. Eventually...

E.g. The music I was not going to do initially, but I quickly got feedback that music was important, so I subscribed to a music service (and wrote a couple of the songs myself - got a friend to play them for me). Now my biggest delay is (free) voice actors - and myself getting distracted with side projects! ;-). E.g. I have 6 episodes published on WebTOONs now (only 2 are animated fully on YouTube) - static cartoons from the same artwork. I export frames from Character Animator then load them into Adobe InDesign to lay out the pages. That way no need for voice actors to be available. https://www.webtoons.comen/challenge/extra-ordinary/list?title_no=219566 

[cx0r]

so i got a new problem ....

i created a swap set for different mouth shapes beside the shapes for the talking.

surprised, smiling, laughing, bored etc.

but now only the tagged ones (which i can tag, there are 3: neutral, smiling and surprised.)

so i cant tag a "bored" mouth. but it won't show in the animation if i press the key.

i will animate probably without my webcam, except for some head movement maybe.

can you help me again? -_-

PS: OK I GOT IT

I "distagged" the 3 usual mouthshapes, so they aren't tagged anywhere and now my swap set works.

PPS: alank, so you make your own music? u write the text or compose the sounds?

greetings

PPPS:

GOT A NEW PROBLEM

I got 4 perspectives now.

2 for right and left walk

and 2 for standing still left and right.

so my eyeballs will only follow my mouse in the right and left profile for walking.....

[alank99101739]

What I normally do for mouths is create a “Mouth Group” layer under which I put a “Mouth” layer. The built in visemes go inside “Mouth”. This includes sounds but also includes a few expressions (“smile”, “surprised”). The other expressions “bored”, “angry” etc go under Mouth Group.

I then create a swapset at the Mouth Group level where the default is “Mouth”, but keyboard triggers can replace the whole Mouth with “bored” etc. Then I create a second swapset inside “Mouth” with Neutral as the default with keyboard triggers for each of the visemes or expressions I want to trigger by hand (with keyboard).

Note: you can add them by hind in the timelone if you need to without triggers, but I typically add a few keyboard triggers for different expressions. I also sometimes hook the same trigger up to raising the eyebrows etc as well, so the whole face changes with a single trigger.

But if you have it working, then great! The above is just what I found to work. Once you find a pattern that works I suggest repeating it for all future puppets.

For music a friend produced the “pressure” music (with clock ticking) used in the video. I wrote the melody line for the credits and the same friend composed into a full sound track. I have another song written but not composed yet (for a later episode). I was going to get a friend to sing the words, but have not got around to it yet.

But it was taking so long that I found a music site instead. Epidemic Sound, but there are a few around. It had a YouTube license where you paid a subscription only for the months you were publishing. So I got more music there. So a bit of both. I dabble - its fun. Not necessarily productive, but this is a hobby for me so no deadlines!

[alank99101739]

Regarding your eyeballs for your two standing profiles, look for the Eye Gaze behavior (probably on the root of the puppet). In the properties panel there should be a “Handles” section. If you expand it it shows what eyes are bound to - is it bound to all 4 profiles? Just 2 (Left and right)?

Sometimes you need to add multiple behaviors (e.g. add a “Eye Gaze” behavior to each “Head”). The fact that two profiles work and two do not is interesting however.

The other thing is to check tagging for eyes. Its easy to make a mistake. https://extra-ordinary.tv/2018/04/21/debugging-character-animator-eyess/ Is a blog I wrote on debugging eyes (because it is such a common problem).

[x2tripple4]

hey dude....

sorry i didnt answer.

im still not gettin it.

even if i add an eye gaze behave to the heads, it won't work.

somehow it will recognize only 1 profil of the 4 and a second one with only 1 eye tagged as a handle in the behaviour.

im resignating over here -_-

PS.

ok i got the second profil to work.

but somehow 2 of them still wont.

PPS:

ok sorry and thanks dude.

i tried it again, with adding an extra eye gaze behaviour. it worked fine.

thx very much again.

greetings!

[alank99101739]

So after reading the PS's I think you got it all going.... yes?  If so, congrats!