Moho Animation Forum

It's an old idea I had when was testing AS 9.5 and I have used in a couple projects.
Now I remembered I finally can share it with you.

This is great!!!!

Cool technic!! Thanks for showing it!

Great control over walk actions! Thanks for sharing.

Very cool - thanks! The onionskin idea is nothing short of genius - well done!

Very clever! I'd never have thought of that.

Genius

I agree. "El Maestro" Genius.

My first thought on watching this was "genius!", but so many people have now made the same comment that I don't feel I can say it any more - but it's genius!

When Selgin rescales the keyframes, he just clicks and drags them and they space themselves apart automatically. Does anyone know what keys he holds down to get them to rescale so smoothly?

Ha. Never mind, it's the "alt" key.

Wow, this is worth watching several times! Gracias y felice navidad!

This is genius. Thank you. I'm curious about best practice for ending this walk cycle. I stop the "Walk" bone rotation and the character stops mid-step. I've tried making the next frame a keyframe, then rotating bones until the character is in a normal resting position, but I can't make it smooth. Any thoughts?

selgin wrote:It's an old idea I had when was testing AS 9.5 and I have used in a couple projects.
Now I remembered I finally can share it with you.

You're a genius, Victor!

That's brilliant! Thanks for sharing this technique--I know it will come in handy here too.

G.

This technique is so useful, I feel it should be called something more momentous, like "The most Amazing Walk tool ever!"

Anyway, I have added a walk bone to some characters, and for my benefit (now yours) I documented a step-by-step procedure which I thought I would add here. First, a couple of wrinkles. I rely on Mike Kelly's Walk Assist script (available at the other site) which I use to save and record all kinds of actions, not just walking. Second, if you are as lazy as I am, you can start with a pretty good walk cycle from the character generator. And I animate at 30fps. So with those additions, here is how I walk.

Create a walk cycle with character generator. Save using Walk Assist (can be done from within the action)
Load saved walk into my character
Move the first set of keys to frame 1
Scale all keys on timeline (alt-drag) to frame 300
On Frame 0, add a bone with no parent, no influence, named Walk
Create a Smartbone action for that bone
In the Actions window, click once on mainline then click Insert Copy
In the Actions window, double click on Mainline then clear all animation from document.
Double click on Walk action, set an onionskin at the second and forth column of keys
Go to frame 3000
Rotate the Walk bone three times
Specify the Walk bone rotation as linear (be sure no other keys are selected)
While still in the bone layer, hit M, then shift drag to the right a little
Specify the Layer translation as linear (be sure no other keys are selected)
Continue shift drag to the right until the trailing foot position of one onionskin is on top of the leading foot position of the other onionskin
Return to mainline and test.