I’m looking for a solid walk-cycle tutorial, and I’ve found two. Each one has a different method for rigging the leg armatures. And both methods are different than the one in the Wiki that covers armature rigging.
So, please.
Is there any way to simplify the list of tutorials, so that there is a concise path for us to follow from start to finish? It’s so frustrating to spend hours rigging an armature, only to find out that it’s either obsolete, or not the one suited for a walk cycle, so then I have to start all over to have the correct bones set up with IK solver constraints to match what’s going on in the walk cycle tutorial.
I realize there’s more than one way to skin a cat here, but it would be great if the tutorials were somehow grouped by methods or something like that?
And of course, lastly, if I want to have walk cycles, what’s the best pathway to follow?
The stride tutorial?
The advanced Animation Wiki tutorial?
Each one seems to refer to previous tutorials that now seem out of date, and being somewhat confused already, it’s difficult to discern what’s up to date and what’s not, and how to translate the out of date into up-to-date.
Thanks for your help, as always.
Oh come on now…
I learned most of what I know about animation/rigging from looking at other people’s blends so I can’t recommend one tut over another. The reason I think no-one has answered is because Blender doesn’t have any defined protocol for bipedal rigs. That’s the best way I can think of saying "Armatures and their bones were not designed specifically for one task; they’re designed for any skeleton, Rubic cubes, Octopuses and elephant trunks (which don’t have skeletons) and other such nefarious tasks as telescoping antenna, car suspension and Driver objects for IPO Curves.
The best you can do is to download some of the blends from Elephants Dream and others posted by Gabio, Nozzy, Calvin and Skechy, look at them to figure out how and why they used extra bones and constraints in the way they did. It’s not going to be a linear learning curve that goes “if this then that” as much as it’s going to be a progression of aha moments, things that go “Click!” after which you have a much better understanding of the possibilities and will probably be able to adapt and innovate your own bone/constraint relationships because you have a better understanding of what’s possible and and which possibilities are best in which circumstances.
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A good walk cycle tutorial was done for the ludwig rig which you can view here http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/tutorials/wt01.html I used this tutorial just to see the mechanics of the walk cycle because it can be applied to any rig. It doens’t show you how to make a leg/foot rig but I made one just the other day that is much simpler than any of the foot rigs I have seen tutorials on, here is the thread http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=86848. The only downside to this rig is that you can strech the foot away from the shin so you have to be careful about that, but other than that you can get the entire range of movement for a foot and leg and make it in just a few mintues.
If you are feeling very happy, you can try this extra long tutorial. (Includes blend files on the way so you can check or stop at a point where you think you got the rig doing what you need it to do.) 
http://www.blenderprojects.com/calvin/footTut/index.htm
Calvin I read and printed out in hard copy your tutorial. You are correct it is NOT for beginners. But unlike a lot of tutorials you did mention
The following tutorial is NOT ment for first time blender users, so I’ll be just throwing out terms at you… hoping you know how to do it.
[update] If you are indeed a beginner, I’ve just discovered that a tutorial by YogYog has a similar rig (at least the beginning part) in a hopely more descriptive manner. Once completed that you should have enough knowledge to come back and complete my tutorial…
One thing I did notice an your tutorial and in yogyog’s tutorial and in all the other that I have read, everyone says"Add an armature by pressing the space key and choosing add from the pop up menu and going down and choosing Armature in the sub menu" That is fine but when you do that you get a bone pointing vertically UP in whichever view you chose to add the armature. EVERY rigging tutorial that I have EVER seen shows you how to construct a leg with the “thigh” bone pointed DOWNWARD in the screen shot of the 3d viewport but they NONE of them ever say click the"root of the added bone and then press shift-key and right click on the tip of the bone. Press R key then rotate the bone 180 degrees." The tutorials just ASSume you are going to do that and they just go on from there. The will lead to one of those “Well how did he get to this point” moments when a person is reading it if he/she does not know to do that. I had a LOT of those reading tutorials when I first started blender in 2000.
Even worse yogyog tutorial tells you to “grab the bone” Well grabing my postiion it horizontally or vertically correctly on in the 3d window but will not rotate it. He never even metions rotation in the 3d window.
I know this might be a minor point. But its the same type of thing that I see my most blender tutorials and documentation. Maybe giving the finished tute to a totally new blenderhead and telling him to follow it would give you and idea of where you missed things becasue you automatically do them and do not take notice of them.
Well, I posted my tutorial in the tutorial section and asked for C&C, and as far as I know only one person actually went through it. Maybe two, if one was to include shaba1. If there is indeed a problem, as far as being stuck, please tell!
The tutorial was intended for those that already know how to rig pretty well. The purpose was to show a technique… and not a tutorial on how to rig a character.
Also, thanks for the point. I’ll be sure to keep in mind if I write any more tuts.:yes:
Hi !
I’m was searching for a while the simplest and most efficient way of rigging a character,and espescially the legs which are the most important part if you want to animate a walk cycle.
All the rigs that I’ve found use reverse kinematics (IK solvers at foot level), or rarely forward kinematics.
For my own, the best method I’ve found for the lower part of the character (thanks to George Maestri’s marvelous book), is Inverted hierarchy kinematics.
In this method, the head of the IK chain is the foot, and the bones are pointing backward.
The IK solver is at the hip level. It is almost impossible to lock the higher bone to the hip bone, but it is more an advantage, because it allows more suppleness in the hips if needed.
The main advantage is that you can perfectly lock the feet on the ground. Using this method, you will get a total control on the feet, and they will never slip, which is the main problem in a walk cycle.
One more good point for this method is that the rig of the feet is very simple. You can get all the movements with only 3 bones and very few constraints !
Philippe.