Front walk cycle

[lawnmower70]

Just thought I'd share this. Took a bit of figuring out, but I'm somewhat happy with the results. Basically wanted to see if I could do it, no real use for it just yet. It's not perfect, but I learned a WHOLE lot doing this.
I tried to make the shadows on the calf help with the illusion of distance. Not sure if that comes across as good as I wanted it to.

[muhire]

Keep moving man, the important think is the UP-legs position, than passing position (in middle), if you know how do the walk on side view, so i guess you need to scale the thigh bone to half or below half, where on contact position you will reset them (thighs) again, good luck, but anyway if it was your start, is good

[ruscular3d]

The technique is so subtle that I almost miss it, but I love it. Made all the difference in the world. What I notice is the shading of the legs for each of the step of extending the legs forward and also the tipping of the shoes. When I saw this, I knew that Lawnmower man was showing us something that I have not seen before from anyone. Regardless of the leg cycle and how well it was done, the important things is that he just revealed a aspect of his tricks that we could benefit from learning. He use several smart bone to control the shading of the legs and tipping of the shoes. Front walk cycle that I have seen from most people here remind me of the old Batman cartoon run scene of running the legs swinging side to side. This is the correct approach in my opinion of a straight on leg walk cycle from the front.

I hope GCHarb is noting this!

[saintbe]

Looks good !

I agree with muhire's comment on resizing the thigh.

I actually tried something similar not too long ago which I pasted in the "how do I section".
Here was my try ... still needs improvement :



Greetingz,
Kim.

[lawnmower70]

Thanks for the advice, and kind words. Id show you my rig for it but it involved a lot of experimentation/ trial and error and its not the cleanest thing in the world. When I find a feww spare minutes I may play with it some more and try to improve.

Not to mention maybe I'll put a bit of effort into the background.

[ddrake]

Nice work

While on the Front Walk cycle topic, I thought I'd go back to basics a little and pull in the Character Wizard mannequin and compare the ridiculous pre-programmed walk-cycle to something you can do with the same rig.



Technically it's not the SAME exact rig that CW spits out, because I pulled the hip joints in on frame 1. (But that width can be adjusted in CW, and this is just an example)

Here's the preview showing the bones.



You'll note an additional bone to the side, which is something I started incorporating into other rigs. I duplicate the hands and put a set below all the other body layers, then create a "hand toggle" bone that uses a smartbone action to turn on and off visibility of the the hands. (in this instance I just made one that flips right- on/off and left- off/on because was all that's needed.)




Anyway, thought I'd share this if you're working on front walk cycles. And here's the .anme file (exported to Version 9 - but I don't think I used anything from 10 that doesn't crossover.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/md9tc23050w9p ... .anme?dl=0

Clearly nothing ground breaking here, but even with the simple shapes and relying mostly on the bone scaling tool, you can get decent results. Obviously it gets more difficult with more detailed characters, but shadow work is a great way to help pull off the illusion. Keep up the good work.

[ruscular3d]

I think the shadow on the ground does help link the character walking on the ground. The only thing is that the shadow look like its from a live actor than a toon character.

I think if you conbine shading on the legs and a toon shadow on the ground would be a great combo.