Hi all,

In my V3 folder, there's a "walking" pose folder, and in it is a single walking pose animation. 30 frames. (Can't remember where/how I got it, but I suspect it was from DAZ (or should that be "!DAZ" :-) )

But my question (as an inexperienced user of animation) is:

How far should V3 move forward during the animation?
As loaded, she "walks on the spot". Slippy-slidy and all (moon-walkers, watch and go green with envy!)

Experimentation has led me to believe that the distance should be somewhere near 2 ground-plane squares per 30 frames.

Am I correct? Or is there a specific value for Z-tran that is exact for a single 30-frame animation?

PS - I really only use the animation part when doing dynamic clothing, so it's not too serious if no-one knows the answer, I'm just curious..:-))

(2-ground-plane squares seems to work for most situations, and I'm really only interested in stills at present. I use the animation just to get the cloth to flow correctly)

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 02/08/2006 16:29

The other key to a walk cycle would be the walk path. This is what allows your character to move from the spot they begin in, and automatically makes your character walk across the space. How long is a pace? It depends on how long you make your path, and how many paces you want her to take along it (the number of times the cycle is repeated). Of course, it'll look strange to have your figure goose-stepping across the space, but only moving in tiny increments with each step - you have to work out this relationsihp for yourself. But so far as I can tell, there is no 'standard' step.

many thanks, jonthecelt, but I knew that..:-) I'm only concerned with the V3 walk as defined above. All I want to do is set my V3 to the correct offset in Z at frame 30 such that the animation works correctly. I've stepped (pun??) through the animation carefully, watching where each foot lands on the floor and takes the weight. At that point, the load-bearing foot should stay in exactly the same location whilst the rest of the body moves. I know my physics:-). I'm close, but I'm just curious to know if there's an exact number (in straight-forward - ie Z axis terms) for that specific walk-cycle... Cheers Diolma

try one pace (left, right) covering a metre. that's how the romans did it, and it worked well for them. I reckon vickie is a bit taller than the average roman soldier, with longer legs, but then she's a lady

There's also the fact that, if that's an official DAZ pose, then maybe there's someone at the DAZ forums who can offer a proper answer. Have you tried over there? jonthecelt

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

If you have her walk in place, you can see that her feet "slip" on the surface. I wrote a script that moves the body to stop the slipping of the feet, and that automatically makes her move forward. It's not perfect, some walk animations work better than others, but it's something. There's another thing the script does: it adjusts the y offset to make her walk on other surfaces than the ground, it works even for non-flat surfaces. You don't have to enter a "pace length", the script will work it out for itself. Only one gotcha: it uses Tkinter, so it won't work on a Mac.

For what it's worth, a 'typical' step is 0.41 times the person's height. So if Vicky is 5'11" or so, the average or typical step would be 29".

By step, do you mean left-rght, or simply one foot in front of the other, Ockham? jonthecelt

Many thanks for the replies folks!

(Steven - I've downloaded your "WalkThisWay" script - will give it a go soon.. I'm on PC.)

Just to say, I was only curious. The reason I wanted to know was to get a "realistic" effect on a dynamic gown (by Carib98) when V3 was wearing it, in a still atmosphere, using the clothroom.

What I did was to start with V3 (no morphs) in frame 1, wearing the gown. There were some minor poke-thru problms, so I scaled V3 (body) where necessary to get rid of them. Went to frame 5, removed all the scaling, added a couple of morphs. I added an extra 85 frames to the time-line (just in case) Then I added (from frame 5) the V3 walk-cycle anim. Moved V3 ahead in Z by 2 "ground-squares" in frame 35, added another walk cycle, moved V3 ahead again in frame 65. I broke spline in frame 65. Then I clothified and ran the simulation.

(BTW - it took me several attempts to get the sequence right , a total of about four hours...)

Then I played a bit with the final pose, added hair and a prop, and ended up with a reasonable final pic. Which I rendered in Vue :-P (with some presets..)

And got the above...

(Still a WIP...)

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 02/09/2006 16:40