*** Animation workshop 2 ***

Support Animation and Rigging
21

That is a really good tutorial with a lot of invaluable subtleties that won’t be obvious to first-time users, but will get them thinking right from the beginning. Just one item I found could confuse, between Fig 5 and Fig 6a:

rather serendipitous, in that if you look closely below in Figure 6a, you can see a dashed line that visually represents the lag/lead time that Blender is introducing. When the Stride Bone LocY IPO curve is set to linear,

how the Stride Path’s speed laggs behind the Curve Path’s speed at the beginning of each cycle.

Thanks again, I heard another loud Click!

%<

22

Thanks for the advice. I’ll have to think a bit more about that.

Also, I’ve discovered that the way that I’m using the Stride Bone in the “Practical Example” section is completely messed up; so I’ll have to re-do that section. So just ignore that part for now.

Still deciding if I should use a better foot rig setup (would make it a lot longer) or just supply a pre-made rig setup based on Bassam’s setup already posed and then just add the Stride Bone in the tutorial.

The way it works is that you animate the Stride Bone in concert with a target (usually the foot ankle) to create the action. (Whereas, I’m manipulating things at a later stage to obtain a “good” looking Motion Path). That’s probably why I’m getting that “leaning to the right” motion path curve instead of a more symetrical-like arc. (Though the result looks not bad when animated).

Sorry about the inconvenience; I’m still sort of figuring this stuff out myself.

<UPDATE>

I edited everything again. Added Fligh% 's suggestion and completely reworked the practical example section to “correctly” use the Stride Bone feature (I hope :wink: )

Did quite a bit of “slicing and dicing” so hopefully all the images are numbered right and not too much is out of order.

Just have a little problem with the final, getting a little foot slippage near the starting of the cycle, probably just need to add a couple more KeyFrames there to correct it, but the rest of the walk cycle is pretty much perfect :slight_smile:

Thanks to SlikDigit, Malefico, Fligh%, and all the others who helped out.

</UPDATE>

23

Gimble, thanks for the excellent tutorial!

I did your tutorial with no problem. But when I tried to add a stride bone to my existing rig which I built in 2.40, I can’t grab and move the stride bone. I can only rotate it around its root or I can move it using the Transform Property window.

Do you have any idea why I can’t move it?

24

You’re welcome :slight_smile:

Should be able to move the stride bone, both in Edit or Pose mode.
Are you sure you didn’t make it the Child of some other bone?
Maybe check the ‘Armature Bones’ panel in the Edit Buttons Window, and make sure that the area next to 'child of ’ is blank.

Still working on the tutorial to improve it.
I plan on adding a character to make it easier to pose for the “creating the walk cycle part” (since it’s hard to judge the upper foot/toe region rotation at the ball of the foot due to the default angle that the ankle bones are at.)

25

No, it’s not a child and I added this bone last.

Also, you wrote "Change scale mode to scale wrt cursor by pressing [ . ] "

and "

Ensure the cursor is at the origin by pressing Shift_c and switch to scale/rotate wrt to cursor mode [ . ] key. "

What’s “wrt”?

26

I think it’s a backwards compatibility problem. I checked and discovered that I built the rig with 2.39. When I open my rig with 2.39 I was able to relocate the bone.

Guess I have to build a new rig if I want to use 2.41. AAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

27

wrt = with regard to.

%<

28

Gimble, excellent tutorial(s)!! Thank you! I think you are one of the best Blender tutorial writers! Please join the Blender Wiki Club.

29

Hi!

Gimble, Thank you for this huge and most interesting tutorial. I have learnt a lot with it .

I have spent many hours on it, because of my poor english, but I think that you spent much more time to create it, so thanks again!

This said, I’m at a point where I do not understand what’s happening:

My walk cycle is good.

I believe that I have simplified a bit the method for setting the LocY Ipo of the Stride Bone, using 2 empties with Copy location constraints on each of the two toes bones, and an empty parented to one of them for the “reverse passing”.

I don’t use a complicated automated rig for the feet, but only two bones per foot.

Some extra bones are hidden, because they are only used for deforming the mesh in the bending joints, please don’t care about them.

The LocY Ipo maybe not perfect, but my problem is not here:

When I toggle Stride Path and Y in the transform properties panel of the NLA Editor, My model only follows the path without walking.

I get the same result with X selected.

If I select Z, then my model walks in a jerky way, and I cant find a good setting.

I have checked the Stride Bone Axis, and they seem OK: The Y axis of the Stride Bone is in the direction of the path, along Y axis, but Z axis seems to be active instead… Very strange!

I have looped the walk cycle 4 times, and set it on 96 frames from 1 to 97, because the cycle is 24 frames long.

Pose markers are set in the timeline.

An idea?

Here is a blend file with my settings, to play with:

http://3d-synthesis.com/blender_miscellaneous/Stride_Study_02.blend

I hope that someone will be able to find what’s going wrong, because I’m becoming mad with it! %|

Thanks in advance.

Philippe.

30

Hi Roubal

Sorry to hear you were having trouble following the tutorial.
I’ve completely rewritten the 3rd part on using the Stride Bone feature to make it less convoluted. I hope that helps.

The biggest problems I can see with your file is scaling.

Your armature is scaled by a factor of 10 and your path is also scaled by a factor of 200.

You should always scale the path in Edit mode, because when you use Stride Path, the length of the Path is part of the formula to determine the walk cycle.

I couldn’t quite fix your file completely; the character is “floating” a bit. I am not sure if that is repairable or not, but I didn’t spend much time on it.

To correct it, you need to clear the parenting between your character’s gloves and boots and the armature; and then also between the armature and the path.

Press [n] to bring up a properties panel to view the objects parameters.
Then press Ctrl_a on each to reset the size.
Also, on your armature in edit mode you should recalculate all the bone roll angles by pressing Ctrl_n (This, I think, is throwing things off)
I should add that to the tutorial also (sorry)

Here’s your file:

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kugyelka/Stride_Study_04.blend

31

Hi Gimble!

Thanks a lot for your response and for having spent some time on my problem!

I will study your corrected blend file as soon as possible.

I have also thought of a method that I want to check, using the Curve Deform parenting instead of path. I will try to make a tutorial if I can make it work.

I use à lot Curve Deform for automated cars animation (like in my chase sequence), and it could give an other way to animate walking characters, perhaps easier… to be followed!

Philippe.

32

Roubal: Sounds interesting. I’ve been playing with Curve Deform lately also. It’s quite a powerfull feature and has quite a few uses.

Look forward to seeing how that works out. :slight_smile:

Popski:

I’ll try to sign up soon.
Maybe I can help with spelling and so.
If you want to use anything, just let me know.

33

Hi!

Well, I have achieved a perfect walkcycle animation following a curve with the armature only, but I have difficulties doing the same thing with the complete character… strange!

I’ll keep working on it.

For the Curve Deform system I had in mind, I use a small mesh (arrow shape) as a trolley, to follow the curve. As using Curve Deform, the center of the objects and the mesh itself do not move in the same direction, you can’t parent the armature directly to the arrow mesh object.

You have to add an empty which is parented to the arrow mesh by Vertex Parent.

The armature is parented to the empty.

The Arrow mesh used as a trolley is animated by a dLocY or dLocX Ipo which is nothing else than the Stride Ipo Curve, set to Cyclic Extrapolation.

This curve is used to give the object it’s linear speed, along the curve.

The method doesn’t use the automated stride bone calculation, and works fine, but I couldn’t find a way allowing to change the walkcycle speed and the linear speed of the trolley at the same time… %|

So I came back to the method described in your tutorial… :wink:

I’ll search more when I’ll have better results with the classical way!

Philippe.

34

Hi Gimble!

Thank you again for your tutorial!

Finally, I have done my first walkcycle with a stride bone!

This said, I haven’t been able to find what was exactly the problem in my previous files, but I have some ideas about that:

I had one file with only the armature that was working well and an other one with a complete character with apparently the same settings, not working…

Finally, I have kept the armature of my good file, and I have imported the mesh from the other file, and re-parented the mesh to the armature, and everything worked fine.

At a moment, I have noticed un unwanted keyframe in an action, far out of the walkcycle and I believe that this key was locking the cycle !

I have deleted this keyframe.

As I have tweaked a lot, I’m not sure, but it may be the thing that locked the animation.

Here under, you will find a link to a short demo movie in DivX6 (5.485 MB - 23 seconds).

It is my first animation of a walkcycle using the Stride bone feature.

The stride curve is almost perfect, but as I have put Lieutenant Jones on a curved path, a slight sliding effect is still noticeable, because the two feet can’t be on the same trajectory, and the moving point is at half distance between the two feet…

If the character walks in a straight line, there is no sliding.

I know that his walk doesn’t look very natural, but maybe that Jones has a small stone in a shoe… :wink:

I will try to improve this!

Here is the movie:

http://3d-synthesis.com/movies/Cop_Animation_001_DivX6.avi

Lieutenant Jones is for my police chase sequence (see my site for the movie).

Jones will have to learn how to drive my Plymouth Fury model in the next weeks!

Now I need to model some other men: the robbers for the arrest sequence, and several other cops. As they will not be seen in close view, I will model them by deforming Jones model.

Animating a character going out of a car will be difficult I think! For one of my first armature animations, I’m going to do something hard!

I have done some facial animation tests, but for now Jones’s face is not yet animated, because I have to improve the head mesh before setting the Shape keys.

Philippe.

35

Nice anim roubal.
Check the timing of your loop there is a lag at the end of each loop. Make sure you got the same keys at the start and at the end of your walkcycle. Also the begining of a looping action is 0 not 1. Try to move all the keys on frame 1 to frame 0. This way your loop will flow like there was no cut.
And the back of the cops is jerking a bitit should saw a little fom left to right but no really from front to back :wink:
Keep up the good work.

36

Thank you Gabio!

I didn’t thought that the action had to start from 0 !

I’m very new to animating characters, and I’ve quite never used NLA and Actions before… I have still a lot of things to learn and a lot of experiments to do!

This poor cop seems to be very tired, and I must do something for him! :wink:

Philippe.

37

Hi!

I have worked on my character, and I have upload the new version of the test movie:

http://3d-synthesis.com/movies/Cop_Animation_001_DivX6.avi

I ave overwritten the old one, so it has the same name, and the link in the previous post is updated too.

I have re-edited the stride bone curve for more accuracy.

For the next step, I will try to use constraints to make the feet follow the tangent of the trajectory, in order to avoid the sliding in the hard curves.

I will probably have to remove some keys, to allow more freedom and influence to the constraints. %|

To be followed…

Philippe.

38

Now, I hate to be the stupid ass noob to ask this question, but when will you finish your advanced animation tutorial section? :expressionless:

I really like what you have so far, but just when it looks like its going to get to the really fun stuff, its not written yet, :frowning:

39

I got stuck in what we call life. and for the last month I worked 7/7. I know it’s a lame excuse, but I didn’t had time and motivation to do it. I shall continue soon though.

40

i remember from a while ago that there was a site that had a database of free blender models. i remember it was started by someone in on the these animation workshops. i could have sworn it was this one, but i also could have sworn this one was like 30 pages long. but anyway, if anyone could point me in that direction. because right now i suck at 3d modeling period. and i would like some good models to used to try and learn to animate. (i thought i had it bookmarked, but my bookmarks are a mess and there are a lot of them…)