Monday, June 28, 2010

Akem Singh - Walk - Critique



There was a question about my walk cycle workflow:

I haven't animated a cycle in a while but have done walks from A to B just recently. Either way, I focus on the body first, yes. I want to get that timing right so that the translations feel right. The main weight has to work. If you tweak the legs you just have to know that that part will change the moment you change something in the body. So I won't bother with foot rolls and off set and crazy stuff like that. First the body, then the hips, then the legs and feet. That's kinda the approach. Anything that will screw up the legs gets finished first. Not polish polish finished, but finished to a point where additional changes won't affect my legs, knees and feet.

Your walk looks already great!

Looking at the body, you're in a great position!
Front view: the side to side is nicely exaggerated, the up and down has a nice feel to it as well.
Side view: here's where I would tweak the forward translation a bit. Right now the body slows down towards the point where it pushes up for the next step. Looking at the spacing it gets smaller and smaller up to x15 for instance and then from x15 to x16 the spacing is much bigger. Watching that in real time gives the impression of a little pause for each step, which makes it a bit hiccuppy. I would actually take that out and make the forward translation linear or at least reduce it by a lot in order to get rid of that pause feel.

The feet:
It's good to get rid of any default rotations in any body part. So in the front view the feet are pointing straight towards the camera. You can rotate them out, one a bit more than the other, for asymmetry. Then, the bottom part is flat and parallel to the ground, so tilt the foot sideways the moment it gets off the ground. I like the outer arc the foot is following though as it moves forward.
One thing though, the body forward up and down rotation (side view) feels odd. From x3 to 6 for instance, as the body goes up, I would rotate the body forward for the overlap. Kinda where it is at x10, but start that much sooner so you get earlier into the body rotation on x13, then after the step on x18 the body would be done again, etc.

Looking great already!!
Cheers
JD

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