Dark Warrior Walk Cycle
http://youtu.be/Cpx78o4-jYw
Thoughts suggestions tips and comments are needed and welcome
First piece to go into my new portfolio when its done
Thoughts suggestions tips and comments are needed and welcome
First piece to go into my new portfolio when its done
Replies
2) Dunno about video embedding.
3) The walk cycle seems very robotic and stiff. Even wearing that much armor there is (im assuming) a living being under there. There would be a difference in arm movements if he is holding sword like that, and it would probably affect the shoulders and generally the balance of weight. I suggest getting a shovel, or an object of similar weight/shape as the sword and have someone record you walking it out yourself.
don't lift the feet that much, don't keep them flat when they're in the air
check your curves at the end, like jordan.kocon said, it's not looping
when that's done, you've not only improved it by a ton, but you'll be at a place where we could start talking about more stylistic/artistic choices that could improve this.
This model is a model I got off of turbosquid I'm only slightly familiar with IK FK so I'm not quite sure how to change it up.
IK is just a way to solve animation along a joint chain.
you wouldn't really use it for arms in a walk, rather just for limbs or whatever that are planted to things, like the feet as he's walking.
arms that are swinging about should be keyed in FK as that will make it easier for you to have them arch properly.
if you're animating this in Maya and you got the model skinned and rigged from turbosquid, then just delete the IK handles at the ends of the arms and re-key it with the FK solution that will remain.
This site is very picky about youtube links. so, for yours, the link says
"ht tp://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=afynfkm_v2s &feature=youtu.be"
(i added spaces to post it without showing the vid, but what you need to do is copy and paste only the bolded / larger letters. Everything before the &. If you clikc the share button on youtube, its the "long link" in the options.
As for your animation, here's some crits.
-Your hands are going straight back and front. There is no up and down motion. They should be doing an upside down rainbow, keeping an arc, swinging along with the rest of the arm.
-the characters right shoulder moves forward when the right foot goes forward. That's wrong. It should be moving backward. the arm itself is ok, but the shoulder isnt right.
-The feet are too far apart. He's a warrior, not a cowboy. Bring the feet closer together and don't angle the feet so far out.
-you need more side to side motion in the body to really sell the weight shift while walking. The hips should be over top of the leg he has all his weight on. So, if the right foot is straight under the body, the hips should be over top of that. Right now, the weight is inbetween the legs, even though 1 leg isnt touching the ground. You do have SOME movement there, but not enough. Of course, bringing the feet together will help that as well.
-the feet pause ever so briefly just before the foot slams down. The foot should be constantly moving front to back.
keep at it. Hope this helps
Learn basic Walks Before Jumping To Dark warrior or Personality stuff..
I am noticing that, when I go from maya (I have it set at real-time 30 fps), to quicktime as a playblast that it seems a bit slower that how I see it in maya. Any suggestions on what I should do to fix that? Should i Condense it all down by a few frames right now the one cycle is 47 frames. Which looks fine in maya, but looks slower in quicktime.
--Changed his feet so that they are closer
--Added more left to right in the hips
-- Adjusted the arcs on both his hands
--Fixed the shoulders
--Tweaked a few other things as well.
you really think so?
My working Units time has been on NTSC (30fps), and I looked for a regular 30fps and didn't see one. And of course the time slider is set to 30fps. And what about what sukoto had said about animating in 24 fps?
==
How's the animation look though, is it render ready? Or is there something else I should be fixing?
The walk still has a lot of work to be done. It's still slow, and the body isn't really moving the way it should. From the front view, the torso always seems to be leaning screen left. the shoulders have some weird movement in them.
It might be worth it to take what you`ve learned and just start over. I garentee, the next one will come out better.
Also, here is a little walkthrough / tutorial of how I do my walk cycles, if you`re interested. Might learn something. Might not. It's a lengthy read though. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89007&highlight=destroyer+walk
I actually followed what you posted, If there's something to be fixed I will fix it. I think it looks a crap ton better, than how it originally looked. But yea 47 frames because he's a armored heavy character, if it's slow I could condense it down make it about 30 frames. Though I'm really interested on what you think looks weird about the shoulders cause I'm just not seeing it.
You`ll probably be able to spend days and days tweaking it, but honestly, it's probably better to just move on to the next piece. Take what you learned and apply it.
I intend to fix the chest as you said it tends to lean
and if we can narrow down any other mistakes that should be corrected that will be fixed as well.
So, the shoulders, it appears as though your rotations are going at the wrong time. if you look at the shoulder armour, it's facing backwards, even when the arm is moving forward. Its not till the very last moment before the arm gets to the very front when it rotates to face the front. When the arm is passing the body, the shoulder armour should be facing down, as if they were just standing there. Follow the arm.
Also, the shoulders are going up when the arm is passing the body. so when its at the back, it is down, then it goes up, then back down when it gets to the front. That makes it look unnatural. It should be at its highest at the back, and lowest at the front. At least, for a regular walk like this.
I think this it, I just posted the front view this time. If you see anything else I may change it, but I'm thinking it's time to render this and move on to the next action. Probably running since it'd be the easiest transition.
Thoughts comments and suggestions?
Thanks to all those who have posted really helpful critiques!
I understand if you just want to move on to the next animation, but here's a few things that stand out at me:
-The right leg is popping quite a bit at the 'up' position. It's probably being extended too much.
-There appears to be a frame where the only movement is a sudden drop in the toes, and nothing else. It makes for a very odd pause and a break in the motion.
-The legs seem to lead the hips, and not the other way around. Normally, all motion starts and flows from the hips, so keep that in mind!
Good effort though, keep animating, and soon walk cycles will be a breeze!
Also, your hips, body and shoulders still dont feel right. Like mezz said, your legs are leading your hips, but your hips and body are still leaning to the right (screen left). Here are a few pictures of your contact pics to help get across my point.
Do you see how the middle of your body is always leaning to screen left? My green strokes are what it should look like, the thicker end of the shoulders and hips being closer to the camera then the thinner end. It is a bit exaggerated to show my point.
Your arm with the sword is also too bent. A heavy sword, the arm would be mostly straight for the whole thing.
You can definitely move on to your next thing if you want. I find it better to take what I learn from my crits, fix what I can, then just cut my losses and move on to the next piece and apply all that I've learned. I don't suggest doing a run though. Try another walk with just a regular human rig. No armour or anything. See if you can do another one better. See if you understand the walk before you move onto the run.
Start the vid @2:36min
I just figured out why it's doing that, I had to key some of the joints in the feet because the controller itself doesn't have any attributes for toe and ankle roll. I also had to add attribute to the hand controller to control the fingers. I probably should just do that for the feet as well.
Also I kinda had a feeling the sword arm wasn't right, but I was trying to keep that ark, also keeping it straight looks like he's hyper extending so it should still have some bend right?
And yea I see what you mean with the chest, it's just that's not an easy thing to fix lol. I was trying to do that last night, got close had a better understanding of it by looking at his spine armor. But tweaking it just wasn't a simple task.
Dont be afraid to wipe out all the keys in the spine and redo them!
But if it's too much of a hassle, start a new walk. Seriously. I garentee your next one will be better
Did the post infinite pre infinite and adjusted the tangents accordingly for all controllers. Also edited the animation on both feet joints and made sure they cycled correctly.
You'll notice the secondary movement on his loin cloth. if that's what you call it. I think it looks good any suggestions would be welcome.
I left the controllers visible in this one so you can see the adjustments on the chest spine and hips. I kind feel like it's a bit much, let me know if I should tone it down. He feels kinda goofy less intimidating.
Again speed is it ok?
And then finally, if any of you know how to get mental ray to work or if there is a 1800 number I can call, it would be greatly appreciated. I've been wrestling with this issue for a long time. My scene will only render 2 or 3 frames at a time before it stops rendering and says it's completed. I've posted this question in the tech talk forum but we haven't found any solutions yet. I've tried deleting my maya prefs, tried adjusting memory, tried turning off firewalls. Tried command prompt render and it still isn't working.
Yes, the spine twists are too much now. lol. But definitely the motion you need.
also, you still get that pause. If your last frame is on 20, change your time slider to 19 before playblasting. That should fix it.
How are you currently showing your cycle over and over? Did you copy and paste the thing over and over? or did did you just playblast frame 1 - 20 and piece it together in quicktime?
Well the whole cycle is from frame 1-38
And yea I playblasted it and the copy and pasted over and over till it was about 10 seconds long.
Frame 19 is the middle of the cycle where he switches from leading with his left to leading with his right.
If you haven't already, get up and walk around studying your own movement. Walk slow, walk fast, walk in front of a mirror, record yourself, everything you can think of. Feel out how you move and most importantly think about the relationship and weight distribution between your different body parts. The worst thing you can do while animating is isolate each part out and get into a way of thinking about it in that way. Examples would be like "the hips should be tilted this much at frame 10 and mirror that exact movement at frame 20", or as one critique mentioned "the spine isn't rotating as much as it probably should be, lets add more", you need to think more in wholes and feel it out.
Thinking through the weight distribution is the way to go. When the front leg moves under the body and becomes load bearing for example, think about how that will affect the hips and the contrapposto that the body performs to maintain balance (but remember to keep it relative to the amount of force exerted in the first place, don't over do it!). Get into a practice of thinking about pushing the weight of the body forwards with the legs, rather than moving the root bone and just making the legs keep up. It sounds weird and i've probably done a bad job of explaining it, but when i started thinking this way it really helped me improve a lot. After you get a feel for the weight then start worrying about cleanup, making nice arcing trajectories, removing snapping, popping, etc.
Hope this helps out dude.
Tda, although I agree with thinking through the weight distribution, and that is a great way to get better... If he didn't do that at the start, and he's wondering what's wrong with his animation, crits on his specific animation are required. It will never be as good as if he started it like that, but that all comes with practice. You need to point out what's wrong. Yes, my drawings were definitely over the top exaggerated, but that was to really show him what kind of motion should be there compared to what was there.
Silver, to go on what tda said though, what I found really helps to understand the motion, is for each key frame at the start, I would do that motion a number of times, but each time, I would hold my hand to a certain joint and really focus on that joint to understand how it was moving. Do that a bunch of times for each key. Yes, it is very tedious at the start, but it personally helped me a lot.
Call this done and start a new one. I garentee you`ll do much better on the next just from what you`ve learned from doing this one. I also suggest working in stepped tangents, blocking out all the major weight changes. Show us your blocking and we'll give you pointers along the way. It's much easier to fix things in stepped mode before you start placing random keys, or do your offsetting.
I did that Slipsius. I followed your guide which was very helpful, but I do think tda has a point somewhere we get lost in all the things we need to focus on. And it can get worse and back to better. You posted a link to your guide on my other post (NEED ADVICE). Anyway, I am calling it done but I really want to figure out why this B*tch won't render correctly! pardon the censored french.
Also you mentioned making a blog site but never really answered me on what a good blog site would be for my new portfolio?
Blogspot is fine really.
Thanks again to all who helped and hopefully will continue to help me make my portfolio stronger.
And to Slipius, I had to do a clean install on Maya, something was wrong with my mental ray, so I installed the latest version of Maya and it worked.