Hi, Having bought the DAZ Elephant yesterday for a little project I have in mind, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get working with the Poser 4 Walk Designer. So much so that I've been trying to find reference material on the net so I can attempt to do it "properly" and possibly even include some hip and shoulder swaying, perhaps even some head bobbing and the like :) But I can't find any decent reference images or video clips. I've found very brief description of footfalls during walking, and I've found a single very low-res .MOV file showing an elephant running (or maybe walking fast - they're apparently not sure what to call 15MPH-25MPH elephant motion yet). If anyone has any video footage that they can supply to help me make halfway reasonable motion then I'd be most appreciative. Cheers, Cliff

Check out Junglewalk.com. They list 85 clips of elephants, some of which must include walking!

I think there's a Muybridge sequence or two as well (the photographer who made photographic sequences of all sorts of animals at a variety of gaits, v. useful). I'll check when I get home tonight.

Thanks guys. Ockham, that site looks wonderful - they have tigers too! (and lot smor eobviously, but if I can find a good elephant and tiger that'll be.. useful). Cheers, Cliff

Yup, Junglewalk is pretty much the "Google" for animal actions and sounds.

The Muybridge book I have includes just one elephant motion sequence, a walk shown side on. Junglewalk might be a better option if you can find a good clip and slow it down. :)

It looks like there are several clips that are distinctly superior to anything I'd found on my own. I should be able to make something of 2 or 3 of them at least, I'd have thought. I'm currently marveling at my recollection of the Lion Walk that you did (HaiGen) IIRC, and am amazed at how much "life" you appeared to get into your motion (esp. with only 30 frames to work within) - I'm afraid I'm not going to come close to that quality with the African Elephant. Certainly not on the first go... Assuming that I get something that seems to work, how do we feel "as a group" about walk cycles that require custom morphs? (I'm thinking that some very simple custom morphs MIGHT improve the look of the hip movement, for a second version if I get a basic walk working). Obviously I intend on putting up my results for anyone who wants to give it a spin. It's IMHO quite a nice looking elephant - not a Millenium-class model to be sure, but also more lightweight because of that (swings and roundabouts). I can't wait to give it a spin in Poser 5 with displacement-mapped skin wrinkles :) It looks like it might be capable of simple MIMIC speech too, with a little tweaking. Got a rather heavy front lip, mind you... Cheers, Cliff

Thanks for your help so far guys - can I beg for more? I've come to realise that while the model is very easy to get to walk in even the Poser 4 Walk Designer, actually designing a credible* walk (as opposed to my first 2-minute shuffle) is even harder and more time consuming than I'd imagined. My first stop-start effort (between other things) was based around moving the feet first, using IK. I spent a lot of time chasing down how to improve that walk sufficiently before I game up. Second attempt (started yesterday) invovles not only more trips to the zoo to familiarise myself with the subject, but also starting the animation the other way around - getting some body sway in and the upper limb movement, then moving down the limbs finessing & keeping an eye on body movement for required tweaks as I go. So far while I haven't really done much with the neck, head, trunk or tail (aside from posing the neck to trunk more suitably, based on the footage I have of elephants) I think it's coming along. I'd really appreciate some critical feedback at this point, and any advise you may have so that I can try to improve the walk. Cheers, Cliff

I like the feeling of heaviness you're managing to get into the sequence so far. If it's of any help, when I'm creating a walk sequence I always start by posing the hip over the whole cycle, to get the roll/sway/swing/twist/rise and fall right. /Then/ I tackle the rest of the spine, and finish up with the legs. I do, however, have a picture in my head the whole way through of what the legs will end up doing.

I also work by creating minimal key poses (generally between 4 and 8 for a walk), let Poser fill in the gaps, and refine the full sequence at the end.

I'll have to finish the tutorial I started writing- it only needs illustrations. Mind you, I have a lot of things that 'only need' to be finished. :p

Message edited on: 05/28/2004 11:30

Thanks - that's more-or-less the workflow I've ended up developing. It's amazing how much an elaphant moves its arse when it walks (and how silly I've felt recording elephant bums as they walk away from me).

Anything I've got more-or-less right in this walk to date is more to do with preparing reference footage for use as a background animation to follow (I've only used side view footage this way). To prepar the footage I:

Cut it down to just the elephant and palced that on a cube in Poser.
Via a few steps easier to do than document (for me at least) set the camera to move so that the render results in a copy of the elephant walking "in place" (though of course the scenery moves).
Recut (crop) the footage and also edit it to produce a 30-frame loop. Import this loop render as the background to the .PZ3 file which I then added the elephant to. Swich to left camera to line up as well as possible with the filmed elephant.
Switch to back view and set keyframes to 0,5,10,15,20,25, and 30. Set the hip in motion first. Skipping some msitakes I made, then the abdomn and then chest.
I hid the left legs entirely using the hierarchy editor, then positioned the right collar for the keyframes as above and tweaked until it ran smoothly. Then right thigh, right shoulder, left ankle (and so on and so forth).
Tinker with abdomen and chest movement to try and get the feet on the ground (any tips on keeping the feet on the ground when you want them there?)
Once I thought I was happy with the movement, I used the animation palette to clear out the key frames from dials I haven't used (trying to keep the file down to jsut what's needed) and then copied the relevant channels from each lib to the left hand side. This reulted in an almost hilarious "Sprinting Elepahnt" sequence, with the creature romping away in an entirely unrealistic but funny manner.
doubled duration of the animaton to 60 frames and copied all motion from frames 1-30 to frames 31-60. Selected all left-hand limb movement data (aniamtion pallette) from frame 15 onwards and hoiked it left 15 frames. Cut aniamtion back down to 30 frames. Tweak teh positin of neck and head for frame 1 - and we have what I've produced above.

I'm sure I'm still doing too much "the hard way2 and can't wait to see your tutorial - but in the meantime I think I need to consider the head and tail movement, and possibly watch it from behind a bit more - I suspect the feet may wander left and right a bit, need to check for that and correct it if the problem IS there.

Cheers,

Cliff

The tail doesn't look right somehow (though it matches my footage) and the trunk definaely needs toning down - it's too obviously repetitive which I think might look better if more subtle. Otherwise, this is almost ready to put up for download. My next walking project will be the freebie Bengal tiger - for which I'll have to find out WHY the elephant worked so well, and what about the group names or joints on the Tiger make it work less well, so I can try to "fix those up" in order to get a good walking version. Cheers, Cliff

Attached Link: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/c.j.bowman/who3d/downloads/AfElephantWalk.zip

I've deleted the earlier images to save peoples bandwidth. I'd be most grateful if people could try out the cycle and let me know of any problems. Obviously it's free for any/all uses you can think of within the boundaries of legality :) It even has a simple readme, which inclues the thumbnail graphic that I'm uploading with this message. Cheers, Cliff