Expression Driven Animation
 

Hello peeps. I've recnetly delved into the complex world of character animation and have encountered numerous problems. At the moment I'm trying to animate a simple stick man type thing. I want him to walk across the scene and I'm trying to find an expression that will simulate walking. Is this actually possible or did my only hope of finding one die with Einstein?

I don't think there are expressions that will enable a character to do a whole walk cycle.

However, there are melscripts and plugins out there that do the "footstep" method of animation.

(i.e you place a "footstep" locator where you want your character to "walk" to, and the character "walks" to/on it/them.)

If you just want to see your cool character walk and be done with it, maybe you could find some semi automated stuff, i don't know. But if you really wanna learn to animate I would forget about any automated stuff and do it the hard way :) That means a little IK for the feet and a lot of hard FK workfor the zillions of other joints :confused: I found it really frustrating work at first, actually i still find it really hard, but the result just look so much better. The automated solutions mostly look.. well automated! I think it's really worth taking the long way!

Maybe more oppinion that you opted for, but that would be my respons.

the day that somebody invents a MEL script that when you run creates the perfect walk cycle is the day that person becomes a millionairre!! ;) just kidding but you should be trying to infuse your character with attitude and personality and much of that comes thru subtle body gestures e.g a slight swagger in the walk to convey arrogance and pride or hunched shoulders and head down to convey shyness etc etc. It's all in the sublties and that is what a good animator is paid to do.

It's definatley worth the effort from what I've seen, but dont think that character animators are the only people that get jobs, quite the opposite! I dont do character animation and I hate the fact that every damn tutorial (practically!! ;)) and prize is done about or given to people who do that. If doing walk cycles doesnt feel right for you then concentrate on something else. :)

Sorry i'm going off on one here, i'll shut up now
:)

Alan

Good words there!

I agree that that you should focus on what you want to do. And as a eg. modeler you should probably focus on that. If I wanted a be a modeler it would probably be smart to learn to do it from scratch. But if I wanted to focus on rigging or animation a face generator or pre made meshes to work with would be just what the doctor ordered. I kinda tried to say that in my previos post.

When somebody states that they have moved into the world of character animation and try to walk a stick figure, I just asume they want answers on just that.

And ohh... I think that the tools and people skills in the character animation department only seems to be slowly getting up to par with other areas of 3D. When I look around the boards and the net in general I still find much more good modeling than good animation!? So i think it's a good thing that animation get a lot of attention right now!

Cheers!