Soldier Cycle - crits plz

Bansheesix

Hi, I promised myself I would practice a lot more animation for the remainder of my degree and attempt to maximize my learning. So I prepared a hat with a bunch of short animation ideas and every week I will pull one out and do it. So this one is this weeks.

I also have a bigger lip sync project and a game the class is working on to help out with my goals.

So this is my first pass for a soldier jogging with his weapon. I would like a few pointers to make it better please. Thank You

https://youtu.be/tgUN5-hCjlI

Hito

Pretty solid cycle. There's a small pop in the -X on the left foot when it pushes off the ground. the right foot has a visible rotation pop on the push off in the sideview. The feet are not directly under the Center of Mass, they are off to the +X ever so slightly. And last thing is roll the toes on the push offs for each foot so they are not clipping into the ground.

I would recommend not using screen capping software. The viewport playback is dropping some frames. Max has Grab Viewport option that is useful for this.

Bansheesix

OK! will work on it!
ill also check out the max grab thing

heboltz3

Semi-related to the cycle, the gun seems massive here. Link to Ref.

If it was that large I'd expect it to influence the upperbody animation alot more.

When working with props, nailing their scale is crucial.

The speed of the jog is semi off putting as well. If he was running that slow I'd expect the weapon to be on a target or at least at a hip fire. If you like the general pose I'd arch him over more and expect him to be in an all out sprint. The speed of your animation cycle seems like a pretty standard movement speed for most FPS titles, and as such I'd expect the weapon to be up. Do you have any video reference that you have been using so far?

I'm kind of nitpicking the meta here as Hito covered alot of the great points about the animation itself. Keep it up man!

Hirnwirbel

Hey!
You're off to a good start there. Biggest issue I'm seeing right now is that his pelvis and spine are a bit too stiff, which makes him look somewhat robotic.
When his right foot makes a step forward, his pelvis should also rotate forward quite a bit on that side, like so:


Meanwhile, the spine will counteract that movement, so that his shoulders will actually rotate in the opposite direction. This twisting motion will be stronger, the faster the person is sprinting.
The other two axes are less pronounced, but they still rotate in a run, too. Especially the side-to-side tilt of the pelvis can help you get some weight into your movement: