Walking with a Long Dress

[tiffanyl14655871]

I recently finished my very first walk cycle but chose a long dress and feather cape for my character.

I came up with a solution, you can see in the video.  But...

I'd really love to know if anyone else has any better ideas how to make the long dress flow better. 

Thanks

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

Overall very nice!

The thing that struck me most was it looks like you have two legs that are black like the dress, but because they way they move, it looks like legs - there is no flow to the dress. Its nice seeing the impression of legs moving forwards though. Its problem because you can see the dress where the feet go move forward and then down, like a foot step, then slide back, lift up, then come forward again. It looks too much like foot steps.

You could try changing the strength settings (but I am guessing you did that already). I was wondering what would happen if you made the current dress “legs” invisible, then made another copy of the shape you have for the legs and made it an independent layer, attached to the body at the hips. Then add dangle to that layer in front (the “dress” layer). You should still get the body movement (because the legs are still there), but the dress will bounce up and down because of the body movement, instead of because of the legs...

I tried something quick to demonstrate - not sure its any better, but something if you want to try it.

First, I took some legs I had recently and threw on a dress. I attached at the hips, put some sticks to keep the train of the dress more solid (it flopped down otherwise).

The root layer had the following (physics and walk settings). E.g. I fiddled with the gravity and dangle stiffness, as well as the walk strength.

Here is the end result - I faded the legs out as walking along. The dress is transparent in this demo just so you can see the legs move. I am suggesting you hide the legs (click on the eye icon in the puppet) so they are there (to get the walk motion) but not visible (you see the dress instead). Something like that.

Is it better? Not sure. But its another option! I don't know if you can see, but the dress bounce height at the front of the dress so it does not move and and down as much.

Here is the puppet if you want to explore what I did beyond the above.  Helen Legs with Dress.puppet - Google Drive

[tiffanyl14655871]

Hi Alan

How awesome are you!!  What a legend for working this out, I scratch my head why I didn't ask earlier.  Thank you, what a brilliant solution.

Hehehe, you got that I just made 2 legs with the dress attached and tried to hide them unsuccessfully under the cape.

I never thought about making the legs invisible ... fab idea!

I'm so grateful for your in-depth response and time taken to explain this, a million thank you's!  I'll have a look into the example you sent when I have a moment, thank you, thank you thank you!