Walk cycles in animations

Finally getting to my animation phase but am a little confused about dealing with walk and run cycles. I understand how to make a walk and run cycle but a little confused in how this fits into an animation work flow. Animating a character in a scene where the character is in one place is no problem, but how do you implement a walk or run cycle in between moments when he is standing still. I am sure ut has something to do with saving walk run cycles and variations and then applying them but not sure how to organize this in a scene. Any suggestions on implementing walk and run cycles in a scene?

To fit a cycle into a larger animation, it needs to be baked down to actual keyframes (sample curve in Blender lingo, but you don’t necessarily need it if you made it so that all relevant curves have keyframes on the same frame - that’s what matters) - having just the “cycle” curve modifier won’t do, because by definition you want something else to happen after, as well as before the cycle. You just need to copy the relevant keyframes at the moment your character starts moving, and then work on the “still->moving” blending. The only annoying thing is that your root controller must be oriented towards the direction your character is moving in, because all the other controllers are animated relatively to it. There’s a good piece of advice relating to this fatidic blend : use world-space constraints and visual keying to keep the feet/foot in place when the root controller rotates, that will make the feet stick to the ground and you won’t have to counter-animate them.

See also this for reference : https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?386162-Walk-cycle-velocity-speed-change-(without-foot-sliding)

Hadrien

Foot sliding was one of my main concerns. Thanks for the information and will check out your link too. I may have several different styles of walking or running for my character so I was looking for a way to be able to cut and paste cycles I have saved to whatever scene I am working on.