Walking Animations Tips? Using Maya LT HumanIK Rig - Low Poly Human Character.

Oblivion2500

I'm getting quite frustrated with making walking animations, sneaking animations, and running animations. I can't get the walk animation to be natural. It's so robotic and jittery. Also, when I rotate the shoulders and set a keyframe, the arms and elbow effector rotates oddly. I was just looking at Mixamo, but it's not friendly with Maya or UE4. I'm making a low-poly game in UE4. I have looked at a lot of YouTube tutorials on making walking animations in Maya and they haven't really helped me. Also, I have to make these animations for my character in my game:

• Walking with or without a one-handed weapon: Forward, Backward, Sideways Left & Right
• Walking w/ Two-Handed Weapon (x5): Forward, Backward, Sideways Left & Right
• Running with or without a one-handed weapon: Forward, Backward, Sideways Left & Right
• Running w/ Two-Handed Weapon (x5): Forward, Backward, Sideways Left & Right
• Sneaking with or without a one-handed weapon: Forward, Backward, Sideways Left & Right
• Sneaking w/ Two-Handed Weapon (x5): Forward, Backward, Sideways Left & Right

Any tips or guides for making quick animations in Maya for games? I'm in deep trouble with these stupid walking animations. I'm fine making other animations like attacking, idle, etc. I'm using HumanIK auto-rig in Maya LT 2018, so far it works great, it's just walking animation is hard no matter what.

Arturow

Here is a simple walk cycle tutorial. With this one you can do the run and the sneaky applying the same principles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9N_sIBRWvY&feature=youtu.be

When I do backward walk animations I just duplicate my simple walk animation and make it 1.3 longer ( or if you want it with the same speed as going forward just ignore this haha) . Just play with the rotation of the body to make the player notice its going back and -1 the translation in Z for the feet.

For the weapons , you should just do a pose grabbing the weapon and add it as additive to the cycle

Oblivion2500

Arturow said:

Here is a simple walk cycle tutorial. With this one you can do the run and the sneaky applying the same principles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9N_sIBRWvY&feature=youtu.be

When I do backward walk animations I just duplicate my simple walk animation and make it 1.3 longer ( or if you want it with the same speed as going forward just ignore this haha) . Just play with the rotation of the body to make the player notice its going back and -1 the translation in Z for the feet.

For the weapons , you should just do a pose grabbing the weapon and add it as additive to the cycle

Thanks for the tip! Any tips on making sideways walk/run (strafe)? Also, sorry I don't do a whole lot of animations, what exactly is making a pose and then adding it as an additive to the cycle? Do you mean I just create a pose (no keyframes or motion), then add it to animation layer or just export it to UE4 and do it in UE4?

Rmunday

Oblivion2500 said:

Arturow said:

Here is a simple walk cycle tutorial. With this one you can do the run and the sneaky applying the same principles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9N_sIBRWvY&feature=youtu.be

When I do backward walk animations I just duplicate my simple walk animation and make it 1.3 longer ( or if you want it with the same speed as going forward just ignore this haha) . Just play with the rotation of the body to make the player notice its going back and -1 the translation in Z for the feet.

For the weapons , you should just do a pose grabbing the weapon and add it as additive to the cycle

Thanks for the tip! Any tips on making sideways walk/run (strafe)? Also, sorry I don't do a whole lot of animations, what exactly is making a pose and then adding it as an additive to the cycle? Do you mean I just create a pose (no keyframes or motion), then add it to animation layer or just export it to UE4 and do it in UE4?

When I did some client work that required strafes and such, I actually took the run animation, rotated the entire animation left/right and then used animation layers to then rotate the pelvis, hips, chest and neck to face forward again. It got really nice results quickly. Look at Solider 76 from Overwatch as reference for something similar. Once you have a forward walk and run you can build everything else from that with ease with some layers.

Arturow

What Rmunday said its the word! hahah I just duplicate the walk animation and adjust the feet to the sides and also rotate his body to indicate he is moving that direction.

Here is a video to explain better the additive for animations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JFYt8kGYhM

It's like when you want the lookat of the head to focus or just have full range motion , you just make 1 pose for left , left down , left top , etc and export it to add them as additive. Same principle with arms position for guns. And yeah it can be just 1 frame and let your other animation do the breathing/work for you but that doens't mean that you can't add animation to it

Oblivion2500

Arturow said:

What Rmunday said its the word! hahah I just duplicate the walk animation and adjust the feet to the sides and also rotate his body to indicate he is moving that direction.

Here is a video to explain better the additive for animations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JFYt8kGYhM

It's like when you want the lookat of the head to focus or just have full range motion , you just make 1 pose for left , left down , left top , etc and export it to add them as additive. Same principle with arms position for guns. And yeah it can be just 1 frame and let your other animation do the breathing/work for you but that doens't mean that you can't add animation to it

Very helpful video to demonstrate additive animations. So they are just 1 frame poses, nothing else, no motion OR CAN THEY have their own animations but you just mix them together from chosen skeleton bone like hip to upper body?
So I could have the following animations for example:

1. Idle Standing Unarmed / Relaxed
2. Walking / Running
3. Attack with One-Handed Melee Weapon

Then I can have the following poses or animations and export/import them as additive animations into UE4 or any other game engine:

1. Peak and Lean left or right
2. Aim with a two-handed firearm (up, down, forward, left, right, etc)
3. Armed with a two-handed melee weapon like a chainsaw
4. Idle Hard Breathing from Running or Low Stamina

Am I getting this right? I want a full understanding of the basic of animations and additives before I think of a workflow to create animations quickly for my game.

Arturow

Yes, you got it right They can be 1 frame pose like in this video at minute 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlWgSzXAnbk
It demostrate the AIM of a weapon that can be the same for the head/body/leans.

And they can also have animations , like you said you can have 1 breath but as additive you can have heavy breathing that triggers from stamina or other thing.

But honestly the best tutorials are here https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/
Hope it helps

Oblivion2500

Arturow said:

Yes, you got it right They can be 1 frame pose like in this video at minute 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlWgSzXAnbk
It demostrate the AIM of a weapon that can be the same for the head/body/leans.

And they can also have animations , like you said you can have 1 breath but as additive you can have heavy breathing that triggers from stamina or other thing.

But honestly the best tutorials are here https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/
Hope it helps

Okay, I have been working on animations and additives between maya and ue4. I created a blendshape 1D node to be used in an animation blueprint. I noticed that I can't use additives in blendshape nodes. I have idle as a non-additive animation. I also got a walking/running animation as well. However, I got sneaking as an additive (it's just a pose that can be mixed with idle). I was trying to add a sneaking additive to the blendshape and that didn't work. Should I have just created a sneak idle (non-additive) instead? Also, I noticed some additives don't work well with my walking animations but work well with my idle animation, any fix for this?