Animated Walk Cycle Problem

Talix

Newbie Animator here. I'm creating my first walk cycle and have set a keyframe on key 1 and and a keyframe on frame 17. Whilst playing the animation however the frames in between make the arm move out before reaching the next keyframe instead of just simply rotating as expected. I've no idea how to fix this, can anyone help?

Link to the animation - https://gyazo.com/456f0513d5c3e1e81d43cd077328840e

musashidan

This is due to automatic interpolation. The computer is doing your inbetweens. The more breakdowns you add between your keyframes the more control you will have until at the polish stage you will be animating on 1s or 2s and will have full control.

This behaviour is quite normal. If you set your default keys on creation to linear this will avoid overshoot, and at the end of your first or second pass you can set all your keys to smooth again.

vanessadeluca

Which program are you using? You can take a look on the animated curve graphic. It's a graphic that show you key frames and interpolations, it's the easier way to understand the motion of your animation. If you are using Maya it's in Windows>Animation Editors>Graphic Editor. In 3Ds Max you can find it on a button next to the track bar. In some cases is better chance the interpolation and the bezier of the curves than just add more keyframes. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-22854CE1-48A2-405E-BB0F-30699BD89D60-htm.html

musashidan

vanessadeluca said:

Which program are you using? You can take a look on the animated curve graphic. It's a graphic that show you key frames and interpolations, it's the easier way to understand the motion of your animation. If you are using Maya it's in Windows>Animation Editors>Graphic Editor. In 3Ds Max you can find it on a button next to the track bar. In some cases is better chance the interpolation and the bezier of the curves than just add more keyframes. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-22854CE1-48A2-405E-BB0F-30699BD89D60-htm.html

Although every animator has their own workflow: some rely heavily on the graph/curve editor; others animate by eye in a more traditional way(using the graph/curve editor more sparingly; others might be 50/50, I feel that anybody just beginning and learning the fundamentals of animation should avoid the graph editor and learn the traditional methods to gain a much better understanding of animation, and is a much more solid base to build from.

I'm not talking about just adding arbitrary keyframes to force the computer interpolation one way or the other, I'm talking about adding breakdowns/inbetweens where they would naturally occur as the animation becomes more and more polished - to the stage where you're animating on 1s or 2s and the graph/curve editor doesn't really play a role anymore as the animation will be pretty much completely hand-animated at that stage.

Of course, if animating background characters/game characters/etc the animation won't need to be so polished that you're on 1s or 2s, but I still feel that learning the traditional approach will serve anybody in the long run.

Talix

So the best method to currently fix this is to keep manually adding inbetween keyframes?

Im using Maya and my tangents were set on Plateau. Seems the graph editor cannot fix this, as i can only move the position on the 2 current keyframes and changing the tangents from plateau to linear on the graph editor doesn't fix the current inbetweens of the animation

musashidan

A walk cycle has 4 'extremes' or 'golden poses' or main poses: the contact, the down, the passing position, the up. So the usual workflow would be to set these up first and spend time on the poses as they are the most important. Then you would add your breakdowns between these poses. And so on. As I said above the aim isn't just to add keys anywhere, but in a systematic or structured way. You're not adding the keys to 'fix' things. This is a bad way to look at it,  and a very bad habit to get into. You're adding keys to 'build' the animation.

If you only have 2 frames and the computer is animating between them then of course this will happen. Are you following a particular tutorial?

Talix

I am yes, it is a tutorial from Digital Tutors called "Animating walk cycles in Maya". However, I am using a different model and rig to the one in the tutorial and through following along it seems the animation the computer creates in between the keyframes within the tutorial doesn't have the problem ive mentioned above.

Maybe because of the different rig the computer animates the inbetweens differently? 
Regardless, from listening to what you're saying it seems its not a problem and I should continue to work on the animation as normal
Btw, thanks for your help thus far.

musashidan

You're welcome. Yes, just keep working away. And even if you throw out the animation and start from scratch several times it's all practice and very beneficial. Animation is a difficult art to understand, never mind become proficient in! 

It shouldn't matter what rig you use but you should find one you like and stick with it whilst you learn.