Front Walk Cycle?

[Thrashador]

Hi all,
I've been able to follow instructions for constructing walk cycles before, but I just haven't found a good guide for walk cycles for the front. Does anyone know of anything that can help, or just have good advice on how to make a front walk cycle look right?

Unfortunately, it's not as intuitive as the profile walk. I have to scale the leg down to get the proper perspective on passing positions, and I also have no idea how to make the hips swing... All I have is a torso bone in the center. :/

Any advice would be awesome!

Thanks,
Thrashador

[jahnocli]

Try and get hold of the "Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams. Has som real valuable animation advice on walk cycles, plus lots of examples.

[slowtiger]

Front (and back) walk cycles are among the most difficult things to achieve. That's why they're avoided most of the time, or being cheated (like only showing the upper body), or, when successfully created, get re-used over and over again.

There isn't a good guide because any advice would depend highly on your style and choice of perspective.

Some tips:
- A convincing front walk depends on weight shift. You will need a rig which allows the body to rotate and translate quite freely. I found that a bone rig like this works (it's just the principle of structure, not a real character's proportions):

• Root bone: the one to tilt the whole character (like in curves)
  Horizontal body bone: lets the hips swing left and right
  Vertical body bone: lets the body bounce
  Hips: one bone for both, you may use two and make them rigid by getting one ontrolled by the other
  same for shoulder, although they may stay independent

In building a real character you would construct this with main parts further away from ach other and use bone offset for final placement.

[Poptoogi]

Here's a tutorial I did a while ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv3ke490wSk

[Thrashador]

Thank you guys so much! I was able to make a convincing front walk cycle by using a combination of your advice.

Walks are so much more complicated when you have to scale the bones, rather than just manipulate them! I rarely had to change the size of bones for the side view.

Speaking of side view, I had one more question: On a run cycle I made, with four steps per second, it kinda looks like the character's just repeatedly kicking one leg back, rather than swapping between legs. I followed a run cycle from The Animator's Survival Kit. Do you know why that might happen, and what I can do about it?

Thanks,
Thrashador