Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12351&Form.ShowMessage=2318233

There is a lot of discusion in the forums on ERC, morph injection, MAT poses, and all sorts of diffrent things. One thing that seldom comes up is the Walk Designer and Walk Paths. I'm trying to promote discussion on this topic so that I and others can learn a bit more about the Walk Designer and using Walk Paths. So far I have not had much responce, I tried posting at Poser Pros some weeks back, and recently posted in the Rosity Animation Forum, because that seemed the most appropriate place, but no one seems interested. In particular I am interested in using walk paths for props, but this also entails an understanding of the Walk Designed in general and how it relates to figures. I have posted a link above to the thread in the Animation Forum, and am hoping some of you will check it out, add your bits of Wisdom, or ask questions. Cheers, Les.

Hi I share your pain, I like walk designer but have never produced a clean animation with out having to tweak it. I wish more people would talk about this feature as well and maybe share there tips on how to use it more effectivly.

When it comes to tweaking a walk, a lot of settings will have the same value for the left and right side, but half a stride off (for example, if the "stride" is 30 frames long, the left shin bend will have the same value as the right shin bend, but 15 frames later). So, I'll tweak one side and get it "smooth", then copy and paste to the other side, but offset by 15 frames. Some things still need to be "hand adjusted" on both sides (like the thigh "side to side"), because the sign changes when you move to the other side of the body, but at least I cut down on some of the "grunt work"

Making your own custom walk for figures can help. You make a 30 frame animation and save it into the walk designer pose folder as a 30 frame pose. It wont show up in the walk designer till you restart poser. The walk can be saved with the morph settings so you can make special effects in the walk.

I had some conversation going on Walk designer &/or animation poses going also. One of the things that I learned, is that Walk designer does NOT save body information. So that in a simulation of a paerson walking up stairs, for instance. If you save all that off and load it again later (even to different character) Then they basicaly will just walk in place. There are ways to get body information into the pose file, but it just sounded like a mell-of-a-hess to get it there. I basically was looking at it in terms of creating animation poses for possible resale... Doesn't sound like it would be a good idea. Also, As far as I can tell, Poser will only work with one walk path at a time. Putting two walk paths into a single animation sequence confuses the heck out of Poser. I've not played around with it to see if there is/was a work around, but I managed to screw up 23 hrs of work by adding another walk path. (Would like to see more information on poser animations myself, we'll see if this goes anywhere.)

Attached Link: http://www.rubbertoons.com/_images/antwalk.mpg

I know you don't want to hear this (I didn't either) but doing a walk cycle by hand is much easier and gives better results. It takes a lot of practise and can be frustrating, but tweaking the walk designer is no easy feat either.

The body setting isn`t saved in any pose file AFAIK.

Attached Link: http://svdlinden.xs4all.nl/poserstuff/downloads/walkthiswayv2.zip

I've been experimenting a bit with the walk designer too. If you look closely, you'll see the feet slipping. That's because the Walk Designer smoothes the body movement. Body settings don't get saved in pose files indeed. If you want to save body movement, you'll have to save the whole pz3 and then edit out everything that is not related to the poses. Another option is using Python. I've made a Python script that analyses the feet movement and calculates the right body displacement frame by frame. It also drops the figure to the surface it is supposed to be walking on, unlike the supplied walk designer. See the link. A problem with the script is that it isn't possible to designate an end position for the walk. I haven't figured out the math yet. Probably the best way to use it is using the walk designer and walk paths to make a base walk animation, and then run the script on it. It won't be perfect, you'll still have to edit quite a bit by hand, but the result is usually better than just the walk designer by itself.

As Vially, svdl, and xantor pointed out Poser will not save pose data for an actor named 'BODY' to a pose file. There is a workround for this, but it involves hacking the cr2. Make a backup of the cr2 before attempting this. Open the cr2 in a text editor, search and replace all instances of the string 'BODY:' with 'BODYX:'. Because the "BODY" (root actor) is no longer called 'BODY' Poser will save pose data for it in the same way as any other actor. You should not change the 'name' line in the "BODY" actor, as Poser relies on this being 'GetStringRes(1024,1)' or 'BODY' in order to know which actor to select when you chose 'Body' from the dropdown selection menu.

actor BODYX:1<br></br>        {<br></br>   name    GetStringRes(1024,1)

If you want pz2 files created from this new cr2 to work on normal characters, edit the pz2 in a text editor to replace 'BODYX:' with 'BODY:'.

If you want to test an example of a figure that you can save BODY poses for check out the thread linked in post #1, and get the 'WalkerV02.cr2'.

I ent a WD abuser, just stopped in outta curiosity. But I figger I got 2 cents to add anyway. As regards the vertical movement ting, "The body setting isn`t saved in any pose file AFAIK". I knew this, but I also know that Hip info IS stored in regular poses, so I went to play. I loaded up A3 & a 30 frame walk desighner pose (sexy walk, of course ;-), then raised her hip @ frame 30 & hit play. Odd...there was no extrapolation to the height increase, but she DID pop up in the air @ frame 30. I saved the adjusted pose then rebooted Poser & tried again, just in case. Same result. I'm sure there's a way somewhere somehow to animate & combine the Ytran info w/ the hip sway already present, but I'll leave that to y'all Walk Designers

Walk designer has gradually improved through the versions of Poser. In Poser 4 it's pretty lame. It got better in P5. Poser 6 it's even better. Using properly crafted blends (Those that come with Poser are pretty lame, literally) and the tiniest amount of touch up you can create beautiful walk animations is a fraction of the time it would take to hand key the animations. Keep in mind the blends in P5 and P6 are designed for Don. Any other figure will not look right. P4's stock blends are for Dork. Remember to load the correct figure type in walk designer. It will "work" if you don't but it works better if it knows what you are applying the cycle to. The biggest glitch left in the P6 walk designer is right where the blends loop (Frame 30, 60, 90, ...). It's really easy to fix this with the key frame editor. Simply delete 1 or 2 keys on either side of the glitch. Poser will smooth it out. If this produces a skid in the foot that too is easy to fix. The P6 walk designer added a "drop to floor". This makes high heel blends work much better. The toes no longer poke through the floor. As for the body, I'm glad WD leaves it alone. That gives you an non-animated body part to use for minor adjustments. For example you can use the body's Y-trans to adjust the figure for walking on uneven ground. I frequently use the Y-trans to adjust for shoe thickness. Nerd3D

What hapens if you parent a walk path to a prop, then tilt the prop?

Very interesting! Is it possible to deform the walk path using magnets? Then we could have a figure walk over an uneven surface!

Seems to me some body here made a very cool python script that did a nice job of walking on uneven srufaces... Hurm I wonder who it was ;-) And I still use it! Nerd3D

Svdl, magnets won't work on a walk path. You can use a walk path to creat a motion with a verticle component, the X-Fighter in post #9 is following a walk path. This works quite well for a rigid prop such as plane or a boat moving over waves where it is only the motion of the BODY actor that is important and where the attitude of the prop is supposed to follow the contour of the path, but there are some problems applying this to a human figure where the attitude should remain verticle.

More info on creating a path with a verticle component is available in the thread linked in post #1.

Stands to reason, a walk path has no geometry. So it's back to Python.

I mostly work in P4, P5 does not work well on my machine, so no Python for me :( As to walking up and down hills using a walk path, I think I am getting there, I will post details when and if I fix some bugs.

I think one of the biggest stumbling blocks I've had with Walk designer, is that at no time is there any corilation between the actor and any sort of "ground" plane. This has to all be done by hand, so walking up or down stairs is a real chore to adjust. Once I found out that the body information isn't saved, it became a matter of "how long do I want to work on this to have it discarded when I close Poser?" Yes, you can save the PZ3, but what good does that do if you are changing the scenes? If an actor is going to come down a flight of stairs in one scene, go up a fire escape in another scene, go up the first stairs in another scene, and back down again in yet another scene... Each one of these has to be meticulously posed. Yes you can save teh walk information, but then you have to go into each frame, and make sure that the y information and the Body information, match the scene... Huge PITA as far as I can tell. There has got to be a way to save the entire body motions for a default "Going up stairs" and "going down stairs" per actor character. And again, it would help if the actor could tell where the ground was.

Couldn`t you change the axis of the walk path in the joint editor to make a walk that goes up and down instead of side to side? I.E. rotate the walk path 90 degrees in x(?) so that the side to side movement becomes the up and down movement.

Attached Link: walk animation

I recently did a Walk Designer animation using P6 Casual Woman and the default walk setting.

At least her knees don't buckle like V3's do ! lol

Re post #19: An easy way to change the orientation of the Walk Path plain is to parent the path to a prop, then rotate the prop. This however is not the whole story, and there are issues with IK.