So the walk has turned into a run cycle. The rig just isn’t made to walk like a dog. The creatures hind legs are too long in relation to the front legs. This makes for 2 different strides. The hind legs would be long and slow while the front legs would be much quicker. Now I must say that the creature is capable of having an evenly paced walk cycle. It’s just that it’s not the way the creature SHOULD walk. In the walk cycle I saw, the legs are always bent, making the walk inefficient. If I had to hazard a guess, I feel the animal’s main method of locomotion would be akin to a rabbit. It would hop.
However, when I realized this, I really didn’t want to give up on this model. The rig is too customizable to just throw it to the side. Instead, I decided to tackle a run cycle. This is a pretty interesting one to do. Right off the bat was the realization that I wasn’t going to be able to tackle this like a normal walk cycle. I used a similar method of using a “treadmill” to avoid skating occurring on the feet, but this method differed in the sense that I had to animate most of the body at once (as opposed to just the feet, then dealing with the rest later). After a couple days this is what I have so far. I’m fairly pleased with how it’s turned out so far. There are still controls I haven’t even touched yet as I’m just trying to nail the core components at the moment. Limbs are “colliding” with each other so I have to figure that out as well. The animation isn’t as smooth as I would want it to be but the graph cleaning will come last.
Anywho, here’s what I have so far.
Comments very much appreciated
Looking good so far.
ReplyDeleteFirst thing you have to fix is the back feet touching the ground before the front feet lift off. Or else, there's nothing to push him forward. Make the spacing quicker when he pushes forward with back feet, that'll fix the first thing I mentioned about the animation being too even.
Keep at it!