that tutorial you just posted was taken almost verbatim from the book i just mentioned (same pictures, too)

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Accept no substitutions.

thanks a lot for the good advice guys!

Neostrider - yeah, I basically used mtmckinley's first book along with the animation chapter from Foundation 7 to create this walk. I definitely recommend both as they really helped. I hadn't heard of that book you mentioned, so I might have to put it on the list as my birthday is coming up. I guess the next stage is adjusting the keyframes to give the walk a bit more feel and get rid of some of the jerkiness, though I am a bit lost as to getting into it. As with anything in maya, I guess I should just open up the graph editor and start moving things around. Thanks for the book tip mate.

T1ck135 - actually I am ashamed to say I don't have Mike's new book yet - I have been meaning to pick it up as it looks pretty good. Yeah, I have been wanting to film myself walking, though I have to wait to get my camera back from the repair shop first, as I dropped it during the last challenge taking pictures of the pavement.:angery: You're right, I need to spend some more time watching how others move. It's surprising how different each person can be. I remember being drunk and staring at people upside down in Grand Central about five years ago and being surprised at how they looked like they would fly off into the ceiling...

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arran3D

arran3D blog

Just wonderin, what are the benefits of a low-poly character vs a high-poly one?

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman

with that tutorial si posted if you just follow the images and use those positions for those bones for your keyframes you should notice a more fluid and natural walk like... almost instantly. after that it just takes watching a playblast over and over to know what doesn't look right.

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Accept no substitutions.

I am certainly no expert, but a low poly character would probably use up a lot less memory. so a low poly character would more likely be used for video games. You could also use a low poly to stand in for your high poly character when working in maya to stop it from running slowly. I decided to make this character a low poly to practise staying under a poly limit.

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arran3D

arran3D blog

like arran said, low poly models are typically used in game engines that render things in real time. the lower the amount of polys the faster the processor can do its thing and so the faster framerates you get... although processors are getting faster and have more memory to back them up, so eventually what is now (or was a few years back) low-poly might not even be an issue.

high poly is usually used for still image or movie rendering. it allows for more detail on the model itself (instead of faking things with say, bump maps or normal maps) and sometimes more accurate deformation while animating.

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Accept no substitutions.

well my first walk cycle looked pretty crap, so I decided to start again. This seems to be working a bit better, but obviously still needs quite a bit of work.

https://video.google.com/videoplay?do...77247541&hl=en

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arran3D

arran3D blog

It does seem somewhat of an accurate walk due to his size.

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman

Just saw your whole thread for the first time and I have to say... wow. That's quite some work. Congratulations. As for your walk, it's mostly quite good, but I think his body is too inert at the moment. Due to his size, you'd expect his "abs" to be bouncing around a bit. Actually the whole body tends to move at least a little while walking, but I can only imagine how hard it is to do this without motion capturing . Keep it up.

Hey Chris, you wouldn't know how to operate motion capture equipment would you?

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman

What equipment have you got?

Just starting to get into motion capture at uni.

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Not my equipment. I'm only 17 anways.
My school has mocap and I just wanted to know if there were any tuts or somethin like that for it.

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman

hips/pelvis need to rotate, and the shoulders in an opposite manner... i don't know how you guys go and set up your rigs, but i just deal with the regular old bones with the occasional IK and sdk... it may not be as convenient or as fast, but for me it's easier to make sure everything's moving the way it should naturally and tweak it when it's not.

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Accept no substitutions.

I've done a bit more work on my walk cycle - I adjusted his arms, increased the rotation on his pelvis and added a jiggle deformer to his belly.

https://video.google.com/videoplay?do...46778023&hl=en

I've also attempted a walk cycle with all of his gear on.

https://video.google.com/videoplay?do...52233076&hl=en

https://video.google.com/videoplay?do...69265121&hl=en

Thanks for all of the comments and advice.

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arran3D

arran3D blog

the problem is the arm swing, and the body's "up" on the passing position.

the arms dont have the same rythm as the rest of the body, and they are not swinging in an arc motion, they pop fowad and back. using fk for arms is best for walks.

and the guy's upper body going up on the passing position is a bit too poppy, or too strong.

other than that, my only crit is that, he is such a stylized chaarcter, and the walk is very generic. maybe give the walk as much character as him.

nice works.

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Image dump