Running Quadruped Cycle Part 2

Hey Jeff I didn't catch your comment until I had made this playblast. I'll give your suggestions a shot. Thanks for the input.

Running Quadruped Cycle Part 1

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

Walkin' Dog v2

Added some more overlap on the ears, tried to fix the popping on the front leg, fixed a tiny little pop that was happening in the back leg.

Also, it looks like the front left paw is bouncing a bit when it hits the ground, but I've fixed that already.

Woof!

Walkin' Dog

I'm not sure if anybody is working on this since we didn't make a post, and it was really just an idea between Randal and I... but hey! I've been working on making a dog walk! I originally started with the Nico rig (this one), but decided to go with something simpler for the sake of learning.

Anybody have time to give it a look?

A contender appears!

Hey this is Randal, I'll be looking to work on the next animation challenge. I decided to scrap the dino for now. When are you guys looking to start the new one?

Cerilli's Injured Walk - v2

Here we go, round 2. Thanks a bunch for the feedback guys, it was quite helpful. I tried to address the issues that were mentioned, they were all good points. The only thing I didn't really change was the timing of the limp step. The timing was pretty close to what I had in my reference so I was worried about messing it up, but I instead tried to emphasize the weakness of his bad leg by dropping his hips more dramatically as the foot makes contact. I'm not sure if that's working though, so it still might need to be changed.

Also! I learned that using IK on the hand with the gun made it about 1000 times easier. Should have thought of that from the start!

Thanks again for the suggestions, and if anybody has time for one more round of feedback, it would be very much appreciated!

Cerilli's Injured Walk

This seems like a convenient place to post! If anybody has some time, I would appreciate some feedback on what I have.



For a Quicktime version which is easier to loop: Right-click here, and save it.