Dice Walk

[Fishman]

I posted my dice character earlier. I now have a walk cycle for him. I tried constructing it three different ways. First, I tried starting with the down positions, then the contact positions. My final try was starting with the hip up and down motion and then going back to the beginning and, starting with the contact positions, went straight ahead. I liked this one the best. None of them were hard to put together, but I attribute that to A:M's great tools rather than my skill. I am posting my last effort.

 

All comments and crits (of the work, not my religious or political beliefs) welcome!

 

Scott

Dice_Walk.mov

[AniMattor]

pretty nice. Did you make the cycle in action and put it on a path, or do it in the choreography? He seems to turn very abruptly at certain ponits.

 

matt

[CreativeAustinYankee]

First, it looks like the black areas are highly reflective, but, with this light setup, it doesn't seem that the light evenly reflects off them, ie... the spots on the front and briefly parts of the legs reflect, while the rest shows no evidence. Then again, it could be my monitor.

 

In addition, and this is more a matter of personal preference, is all that shine really necessary?

 

The walk cycle does look a bit stiff and symmetrical. To give it a more organic feel, work with the graph editor to give the movements a bit more fluidity. Some well placed ease-in and ease-out should help. To counter the symmetry, nudge a few of the keys around.

 

Just my two cents,

 

Steve P.

[heyvern]

I like it...

 

I like the bounce in his step.

I like to use my first impression. If nothing jumps out the first time I see it... and I get a chuckle...

I think it works.

 

I think a dice... a dye... a die... would walk a tad stiffly... think about what they go through all day long! I would certainly walk a little stiff. Can you even imagine the chaffing!?!?

 

He does turn on a dime though, slightly militaristic... sorry that's political. But it is a good start. And the abrupt turns are probably the path constraint... the turns seem to stick out... small thing.

 

I did notice that the speculars are a bit pronounced in the beginning on the dots... but that is a tough call on a test render.

 

p.s. Is he naked under those dots? I think I see some "snake eyes"

 

Sorry, I don't get out much... and I am obsessed lately with euphemisms.

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[steve392]

Hehe that looks very good to me ,love the way he/ she /it ,moves very realistic ,well for a dice that is

[seven]

To me a dice is not taking a resolute walk mostly.

They are doing the can-can on the table mostly.

Or some jumping - gymnastics...

Have a try with some other action - and have a look...

 

And the dice being a character there are the eyes? And the mouth?

And a dice always have some sound...

 

Well for sure your dice is walking - but therefrom is he - she? - coming

and there to parting?

 

It will be funny - I hope - to follow the adventures of your dice.

[pixelmech]

That's a good start to a walk. Seems like you did a cycle and placed him on a path. He's got some foot slippage. I for one could NEVER solve that using the walk cycle!

 

I'm not saying walk cycles are bad - but I'd encourage you to pop him direct in the chor window and just animate him walking. It will be harder, you will learn a LOT more and you will get a much less stiff/symmetrical look. Then you can tweak a lot more too - add follow through, a hitch in his giddy-up at one spot - whatever - to really sell the walk.

 

Just my .02 - nice job and love the model.

 

Tom

[Fishman]

Tom,

Thanks for the insight and recommendation. I am following your mini film entry progress and it definitely seems that you were able to make it work. What you are saying about animating directly in the choreography makes sense, but it raises a few fundamental questions for me. Here goes...

 

1) How did you approach it? Did you start with the model in one position and then walk him with successive poses or did you move him to from place to place at the timing you wanted and then animate the stuff in between. That probably didn't make a whole lot of sense, but let me try a different way of explaining it. IF you start with the character in a particular place and then start posing him and he progresses across the screen, the model bone stays behind (as I understand it). If you position him in various places on the screen at various times then the model bone will have a series of postions that you'll have to start with and at each frame yoou will pose with respect to the position of the model bone (As I understand it this is how actions work. You constrain the model bone to the path and then your action is relative to the model bone and the model bone moves the whole character)

2) How do you adjust timing if the action in the choreography is too fast or too slow? Do you jsut drag keys around in the timeline? I thought that was one of the beauties of walk cycles is that they were easily adjusted to get the timing to look right.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will be trying your method in the next few evenings.

 

Thanks,

 

Scott

[pixelmech]

Ok, these are the exact questions I had when I started so I'm glad to answer them!

 

Approach: I essentially animated in a "straight ahead" fashion - but with blocking. What do I mean by that? Well, I had some idea of what I wanted to happen (but no storyboards or anything). I set up the scene. Put the orange guy on the hill, posed him. Put the red guy off the hill - posed him in a "start walk" pose. At that point I roughed out the walk - just the basic keys - to get him to the top of the hill. Then I went back and tweaked it.

 

Then I figured out the rest of what orange was going to do. Same thing, did the basic walk/moves then went back and tweaked. So it wasn't planned out where I did moving holds on keyframes at determined places corresponding to a storyboard - but I did block things out in a straight ahead manner. (I hope that was not confusing).

 

I other words, I didn't try to put all the details of the walk in right away. I got down the basic action first. There were many obvious mistakes and problems in that action, but of course I went back and reworked all those things.

 

This straight ahead manner is essentially thought to be more free flowing and less planned. You can take the different approach and use moving holds and put all the poses for the key parts in first, too. I didn't have enough planned out for that, and I didn't want to animate that scene that way anyway.

 

These two methods are well discussed in Keith Lango's two excellent articles:

 

http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/popThru.html

http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/popThru/polish.html

 

Both are definitely required reading! Ok that's the long explanation - the short of it is this: Yes, I placed him in a start position, and began animating. That's it.

 

Now, as for the model bone - don't worry about it. I don't know what rig you are using but it should not matter. You are going to go into bones mode in order to animate him. It will look like you are in an action window - but in the chor instead - get it? You won't see the model bone then.

 

Forget about a path - don't use one. You aren't contraining a walk cycle to a path - you are just animating him. Make him walk where you want to.

 

Adjusting timing: The two ways you can adjust timing are in the dope sheet and in the curves/graph editor. I've not had a whole lot of luck using the dope sheet - but Jeff Lew makes it look simple. It helps to be organized (which I was not at the start!) BTW, Highly recommend Jeff Lew's DVD - it's a must have, and it got me going on my mini movie.

 

http://www.jefflew.com/

 

Anyway, I did all my timing adjusting in the graph editor by moving keyframes forward and back. I tried not to do too much of this because I am not very good at it - but it works. You just have to make sure you get the right bones - or groups of bones.

 

I suppose you can adjust walk cycle timing too. Again, I had a real hard time with it - maybe I just don't think that way. Also with a walk cycle, you have to carefully plan out where his last step would be, for example, if you want him to stop. If you are straight ahead animating - you just walk him up and stop him

 

I didn't want to mess with that. Plus I want to become an animator not a tool user . When you watch Jeff Lew animate, he didn't use any cycles, he just put the thing together. And again, I think you get a stiffness/symmetry with a cycle you don't want. I think you can adjust that in the chor - but if you are doing that, why not take the extra few minutes and just outright build it?

 

I could be wrong on a lot of this - I am still very new. But that was my thought process and how I did it. Please don't hesistate to ask more questions or challenge any of this - again, I'm new! Hope it helps and let us know how it goes!

 

One last thing - there is NOTHING like just plunging in and doing it. The experience for me has been invaluable. So many things I could not grasp I was able to finally get by just working through them. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut for this! To be an animator you must animate. I know, it sounds crazy. Then when you get stuck, come and ask questions. You'll be amazed at how much you learn, and AM is very 'animator friendly' - once you start getting familair with it - it does not get in your way at all, which is great.

 

Tom

[Fishman]

Tom,

Thanks for the quick response. I think you confirmed much of what I was thinking. I'll definitely check out those two websites.

I've been thinking about getting Jeff Lew's DVD. Maybe I can talk the wife into getting it for me for Father's Day! (Although I'm not sure I can wait that long!!)

 

Thanks again,

Scott

[pixelmech]

Welcome, let me know how it goes!