I'm looking for a resource to help me develop skill in creating walk cycles for characters.

I have Poser 7, and I've used it to create walk cycles for the one or two human characters I have Walk Designer files for, then imported those into Carrara. That helps me animate those characters, but doesn't really give me a good idea how the process should work. I also find those difficult to work with when I need to add in distinct head movements or arm gestures.

I've made video of myself walking short distances, and then studied them frame by frame, but I'm fairly certain that some guidance from some source that has done this kind of work before would help me immensely.

I've got a lot of books on traditional animation, and I've learned a lot of useful techniques with regard to timing and framing from them. I've managed to learn a lot about facial animation from the book "Stop Staring" which I can use in Carrara, even though the examples are all Maya-based.

What I'm looking for is a book, or a video, or a tutorial, or any kind of helpful resource on the creation of walk cycles for 3D animation. It doesn't have to be specifically for Carrara, as I'm really trying to learn principles.

Ultimately, my goal is to be able to create a walk cycle library for bipedal (for the most part) characters with skeletons using key frame animation. I haven't figured out how to save an NLA track and re-load it yet, but I think that's the only Carrara-specific item I have to learn.

So far, I have found Carrara to be an absolutely amazing tool for creating 3D animations, and I'd like to be able to do more directly inside of it.

Does anyone know of anything that might be helpful here?

TIA.

Attached Link: "Walk Desgner" tutorial compliments of Dr Geep Studios

Prolly not 'zactly what you want but ...

FWIW

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

PhilC has a few products.  Just looking at this one may give you some ideas -

istore.mikrotec.com/philc/index1.html

Quote - Prolly not 'zactly what you want but ...

FWIW

Well, as they say, couldn't hoit. :biggrin:

Quote - PhilC has a few products.  Just looking at this one may give you some ideas -

istore.mikrotec.com/philc/index1.html

Cool, thank you, I'll check that out.

Quote - > Quote - Prolly not 'zactly what you want but ...

FWIW

Well, as they say, couldn't hoit. :biggrin:

Hoit? :blink:

Someone's been watching "West Side Story" ... nay?

Nah, but I was quite a Jackie Mason fan, once upon a time...

A really good and free online tutorial is here: http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml
It shows how to make a walk cycle with just four keyframes.

The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams is a popular instructional book with a lot of the material devoted to walk cycles. You can get it on amazon or any big book store.

The idleworm tutorial and the Williams' book are both 2d examples, but everything in there applies to any 3d program you're going to use.

If you do more searching you will find many, many books and training DVDs covering walks and other types of figure animation. Hope that helps.

That tutorial does look helpful, thank you. I'll get a copy of that book, it looks pretty neat.

So far, I've discovered one helpful thing... Originally I was positioning the character at the beginning of the walk path and then keyframing the whole body at the end. Very simple. I found that it looks more realistic if I move the body back a little bit while the down foot is in contact with the ground so that it doesn't appear to slide. It's tricky to keep it from looking jerky, and it's tedious as all get-out, but it does seem to improve the realism. Using a bezier tweener seems to help.

Quote - The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams is a popular instructional book with a lot of the material devoted to walk cycles. You can get it on amazon or any big book store.

Indeed, this book helps me a lot to create this walk cyle. Just 6 keyframes and it's done. ;)

Good tip!

Very entertaining, I like the bounce in his step.