fae_alba

did you try slapping the spacebar??

Many thanks compadre!

Thought you all might be interested in this. I found it on the Howard Lowery Auctions site.

I'm trying my damndest to get it done!

man, that must have been one big cat!

that is truly good news. i was beginning to worry I wasn't going to make it sense I'm crunched with work now and am going on vacation Oct 2nd....Now I can do it..yeah...

My friend, there is only one way that you will improve; that's by doin'. No one judges; it's all an even playing field on these forum projects.

Well, I have no idea what caused this. I just re-downloaded the project from the beginning of this thread...re-rendered and it works just ducky. Back on track on on to tweeking the story!

Did that....

OK, so I'm almost nearly, somewhat there with this wee diversion. But I have one question: Is there any way to reduce the washing out of the girl character?

So I started back into the walk in a chor last night. I thought that I could simply copy the key frames from each foot contact, paste them in each consecutive frame, and move the body bone forward when needed to keep the poor old man moving forward. Sadly that didn't seem to work out. Each time I tried the poor old guy looked like he was taking a flying leap. I think it has something to do with the Lite Rig, and the body controls null. It would seem, that I will have to manually key frame each contact point, which in the long run I guess is optimum since it provides a more organic look (potentially), but also opens me up to not being entirely consistent as well.

I could never stay within the lines on those things!

I use a laptop exclusively, and have nary a problem using am. I do use a cordless mouse with a track wheel. Couldn't be simpler for me. The wheel controls zoom, short cut keys for move and rotate, view buttons on the toolbar for views. No tablet, no keypads... No as far the hot tub on a starry night...well nothing can compare to that! (I enjoy that every night, no better way to end the day)

Thanks guys! I'll get right on it asap (tonight I have to do paying work though)

walk_sample.mov

so...here we are yet again. I've started doing the walk cycle entirely in the chor, and figured to work on just the legs for now. Once I've go the legs down, I'll move on to the rest. walk_sample.mov

Sort of?? For an old guy he's practically tip toeing thru the tulips!

The saga continues....I think it's getting better, at least the process is getting easier. There are still issues, there is a popping at the transition, but I'm thinking that's where I'm moving the body bone forward at the end of each stride. Plus it seems that he is rising up a bit too far for an elderly gent, and I need to relax the hands quite a bit. But give me your thoughts... walk_sample.mov

We had big drums that collected the used chemicals...and yes silver was reclaimed from them...

Hijack away..I've done it enough to other threads! When I want it back,I'll take it!

I ordered The Animator's Toolkit on Thursday from Amazon. Got it on Friday. And those inbetweener stories were some of the first I picked up on in the book. They are relevant, because you need to understand the process in order to make it work.. This I have learned. At first I thought it was better to not put keyframes in willie-nillie. But as I got more into a walk that is exactly what I had to do.

So, here we go with a basic walk take 2. Quickly browsed thru Richard William's Animator's Took Kit, then started over. This is what I wound up with... walk_sample.mov Robert, one question for you; I've built the action in the non-treadmill way discussed earlier, but how do you approach it repeating it in the chor so that it doesn't keep popping back to the start position? Crits all around please. I want this character to behave naturally, so the goal is to avoid the "floaty" feeling

If you're wanting to eventually use a path constraint you'll want to do it treadmill style since that is the convention path constraints anticipate you will use. But animating with real motion forward is a more traditional method and makes the body mechanics problems more realistic. In most feature animation walk "cycles" aren't used because they look like robotic repetition after the first repeat. If a character needs to walk somewhere they animate every step and show the character thinking about why they are going where they are going and appropriately starting and stopping along the way. A Hanna-Barbera cartoon uses walk cycles disguise what would otherwise be a static dialog scene. They do lots of walking and talking in "Scooby Doo" for example. But feature animation tends to avoid such contrivances. Walk cycles got used in TWO for economy's sake, but they are pretty obvious. A good use of cycles in TWO was the parade scene. Ken Heslip animated a cycle that marched forward two steps and made the beginning match the end. Then at the end of the cycle he moved the character's model bone forward the exact distance of two steps to pick up where the last cycle ended. This has the advantage of not altering the length of the cycle as it was animated; a path constraint stretches the timing to fit the distance needing to be covered. Cycles work for the parade because that's a situation where the characters really are trying to repeat their motion. The longest stretch of walk cycle animation I've seen in a Disney movie was the opening of "Robin Hood" and that was... a parade. Robert, that goes a long long way in explaining/confirming what I already suspected. So treadmill walkcycles and path constraints are not the way I will be going, since my goal is the more realistic/natural feel.

Funny you should mention that: I was contemplating changing the cycle to match the tut in the TAO:AM. So allow me to ask you this...if I continue with the walk cycle as I have started, do I need to define stride length, and does it alter how I approach path constraints etc?

I am using the lite rig That "should" be easy enough to fix... I did watch your vid(s) ( a 3 part er no less!). I haven't reviewed the R Williams section yet and will hunt it down today. Thanks for your input!