Robot Walk Cycle NOW WITH UPDATED ANIMATION!

Well I did a quick generic walk for a robot. This is my second animation in 3D. There's still some work that I want to do to him, but I'm happy enough with him to show it and get critiques. I want to go back and do some little tweaks. This is my first walk in 3D, so be brutal I need to learn. You'll need DIVX to play these, available at divx.com.

Will check them out when I get a chance to grab DivX

cant view them, and i have every codec known to man :X. please resubmit

For those of you that can't download....just rename them as .avis and open with Windows Media Player

As for the walkcycle...it looks good! Overall your secondary motion is nice...and I like your model...would be fun to animate!

Here are some pointers:

-I'm sure your going to be getting to this anyways....but your robot's toes and fingers need some movement ...right now he's got a major case of flatfeet

-His feet "slam" down at every step (well...not "slam"...but they hit the ground pretty hard), yet the up and down movement of his hips/upper-body does not compensate.....ie....he should be bouncing up and down a bit more

-In the front view, when his arms swing back there seems to be a bit of stiffness right before they begin to swing forward.....just looks like some hard arcs, which means it'll be easy to fix

Hope that helps!

It's a very good first attempt - but I agree with the crits here. The major one for me is the fact that there is no toe rotation so he does look like he slams his foot down. I'm guessing that this is a downloaded rig as you said you can't find a toebend control (apologies if I am wrong) Most of these downloads come with some readme docs that have some instructions of use... if not, I am sure a rig like this would have one and it is just a case of searching for it.

Here's a couple of links that may help. The first one is an overview of the principles of animation (which will explain the 'arcs' thing Tyson was talking about) Andt the second one is a good guide on walking.

Look forward to seeing more

Thanks guys. I checked out the readme file and still nothing in it about a toe bend, unfortunately. There has to be something. As for the arms I see what you mean, I know what arcs are that's not what confused me. I got confused in the wording and thought (being really new to 3D) it was referring to something in the graph editor not the path of the arms. All these new 3D terms are confusing to a 2D animator. Thanks for the sites Global I'll check them out.

Hey guys here's the latest attempt. It still seems a bit poppy in places and I can't for the life of me figure out how to smooth it out. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. These were exported with Quicktime Sorenson so there shouldn't be a viewing problem. Tear em apart.

Hey man....looking good! Still a bit of stiffness in the arm swaying....but the rest of it looks great!

hey thimsj,
those are locking great, i'm impressed, concerning this was your first try.
i tried it myself, recently...but never got to manage it that good...
what i ask myself (kinda difficult to explain in english for me, so sorry), how would you go, when animating walkcycle in world space? i mean if i animate a walkcycle, but the char doesn't move forward, its all about changing z values of controllerpositions (this way i can copy keys). but when it comes to movement in world, how would manage to get every step to be as far as the last one...
is this all made by eyes (try and correct, try and correct) or is there a way of automating (i.e copiing keys), which i never dicovered?

hope this sounds not to stupid

any help is highly appreciated

greetz
marcus

troubadour:
You can do it two ways that I know of. One would be to already have your character setup with a controller that has everything grouped within it, this is in addition to the normal controls you already have setup (in the outliner it would be at the top of the heirarchy with every control under it, so when you select it everything will move with it but it won't effect them). But what that control allows is for you to, say if all your animation in a scene has to move over all you have to do is grab that node and move it. It being a seperate control it won't effect your animation seeing as it is it's own keyable control, like moving the arm doesn't effect the animation on the fingers but they being attached to the arm move with it. Following me, well boy were almost there I swear. So knowing this you can take that control and when the feet move on the ground just key that total control to move the body so that the moving foot appears to stay still, then just cycle that control with offset and it'll keep moving your character forward giving it the appearance that the character is moving forward off of that foot, but beware it can be touchy and you will have to keep an eye on your keys and curves for that control so that the foot does not slide. Sliding feet are bad.
Phew, not done yet. The second way is to, like you said, just animate each step individually. Time consuming but may be more to your liking. As for making each stride the same, don't. Now don't make them drasticly different I mean if they're not exact that's a good thing. It'll make the difference between a walk that's alive and one that's static. That's why it's good to animate that stuff into your cycles. Twinning is very bad, it's makes things static and lifeless. So if each stride is a bit different that's good, as well making each arm have a bit of a different swing length is good, (which reminds me to check mine and make sure they're a bit different). Maybe one arm goes a bit further ahead of the other, again a small bit not out by a foot. It's all about the small things that will your animation shine. Hope this helps and wasn't too much for you.

whow...thx for this very detailed explanation...
now i know theres no other way than keycreation...it's all about patience, hehe

thats the reason why i'm dying to see tysons making of his mime (worst accident), to look over the shoulder, never had the chance to do that anywhere, when it comes to animation...
but i think theres no chance on seeing it (hint hint )

thx again thimsj