Character Walking

[flashawd]

I've been doing this for awhile now and still not quite understanding this. Example: you start a character walking in a chor in skeletal mode - walk him forward 10 steps - it leaves the model bone where you started. It seems the only way to turn the character is to be in choreograph mode. But then when you use that to turn the character it turn him from the original position and moves him way away from where he was at - having to then go frame by frame and replace him. What am I doing wrong?? Hopefully I am making sense what I am saying. I may have posted this a year ago or so, but I couldn't find it. Thanks for any help.

[flashawd]

I think I answered my own question - I didn't realize you could simple rotate the hips and rotate the right and left foot targets to get a character to turn. Is this the proper way to do it? Thanks again - Eric

[Caroline]

I'm only a wannabe, but from my experience on TWO, the only time I touched the model bone I lived to regret it, and redid the scene.

 

If you rotate the model bone in the animation, you are rotating the whole model. If it is a person-type model, that would not be very good animation, as to rotate yourself, you move your shoulders, then hips, then feet. Those movements would be on different key frames.

 

So I used the model bone to put a character into the right position for the first frame, then didn't touch it after that, unless of course he was making a sudden jump not in the camera view.

[glenn]

I've been doing this for awhile now and still not quite understanding this. Example: you start a character walking in a chor in skeletal mode - walk him forward 10 steps - it leaves the model bone where you started. It seems the only way to turn the character is to be in choreograph mode. But then when you use that to turn the character it turn him from the original position and moves him way away from where he was at - having to then go frame by frame and replace him. What am I doing wrong?? Hopefully I am making sense what I am saying. I may have posted this a year ago or so, but I couldn't find it. Thanks for any help.

 

Eric

 

I’m glad you raised this topic, this is something I have being puzzling over for a while now, as to what might be the right way to animate in the choreograph mode. The main method I use is to block out the action using the model bone, and then fill in the actions using the skeletal mode. The main reason for this is most of my characters have constraints on their feet that don’t allow you to move the feet below the level of the model bone i.e. if the character is jumping off a box I have to move the model bone down first. I hope this has been helpful, if you wish I could try to post an example later. (I can’t do it now, I’m at work at the moment.)

[Fishman]

My understanding is that the model bone is only for intial positioning. Once it starts walking around, Caroline has the right method.

 

As far as needing to move the model bone to get the feet to go lower, most characters have the hips at the highest point in the hierarchy and if you move the hips lower then the feet targets can go lower. Of course this completely depends on how the character is rigged. It also assumes that the legs are IK.

 

Scott

[flashawd]

Thanks everyone