Original subtitles

- [Instructor] In this video,

we will start polishing our walk cycle.

As following cycle, we will apply

some kind of layered method,

meaning that we will start by polishing the feet,

then the root of the torso,

and then the different features of the body.

As explained in the previous video,

we may have to change the timing of this animation.

Vanillia cycle is generally around one second,

maybe a little more,

since I'm animating a 30 frame per second.

A current animation is about 0.8 seconds.

To get a better feeling about this,

I will select all my keys and I will switch to Bezier

by pressing the T key.

Oh when I played the animation,

it definitely feels a bit too fast.

What I want to do is push the length of this animation

a little over 30 frame.

Let's try 32 frame.

So I will set the end of the animation on frame 31.

Now, with all my keys selected, I will put to play head

on frame 0 and press S scale

til the latest keys are aligned with frame 32.

This way, all the keys have been offset by one frame.

I now have a key pose every four frames.

My walk cycle rhythm looks way more natural.

With my amateur in pose mode,

I will select the foot and I will press control tab

over the action editor to switch to the graph editor.

I will then click to show selected only icon.

We will start by idling all the curve

but the location curves.

Whether you're working on the run or a walk cycle,

the first thing you want is to fix

whenever the feet is in contact with the ground.

This the contacting foot is supposed to move

at a constant speed.

You need a linear interpolation

between the first contacting frame

and the last contacting frame.

In our case, between frame 0 and frame 20.

You can easily get to this result

by converting the key frames on those contacting pose

to vector using the V key,

and then we can get rid of all the key frame in between.

The same then apply to the Z and X key,

won't be any up and down or side to side motion

while the foot is on the ground.

Select the Z and X curve keys

and I will press the dot key to zoom in.

There should be no variation between frame 0 and frame 20

so I will simply duplicate frame 12,

which is the same as frame 20,

and move it by pressing G and X on the x-axis

toward frame 20.

Pressing the V key, I can transform the end-alls

on frame 0 and frame 20 to vector

and get rid of all the keys in between.

And here we have fixed our curve

whenever the foot is in contact with the ground,

a little detail here.

Since I have created this animation

by duplicating our run cycle,

we can see that we have a loop modifier or cycling modifier

onto our curve and they do repeat over time.

I select all the curve, I can press shift E

and use a clear cyclic modifier to get rid of it.

But since we are walking on a cycle,

it does make sense to keep the modifier.

So I will press shift E and select make cyclic again.

Before I start polishing the curve,

I will calculate the motion path.

Use the foot controller as a reference point

or you can choose the toe controllers.

As explained before, I will press Q

to calculate the motion path since I've made it

one of my quick favorite, and I'm calculating it

over frame 0 to 32.

Before I jump into polishing,

I've tracked the motion of the foot on the reference.

And before whenever the foot is contacting the ground,

it's moving with a linear fashion.

Then we can see an ease in and ease out

whenever it's starting to raise.

It's accelerating until the passing pose

but also losing altitude.

And then, it raise again,

go a little beyond the contact pose and fall.

On the run cycle, we will polish one foot

and then we will mirror the animation onto the other one.

To help myself, I will go in front of you and press Alt B

and frame off of the character

so that I see only the left foot,

the one I'm going to work on.

From there, let's start polishing the location of the foot.

I will start with the Y location.

As usual, I will display the polish curve as a reference.

In studying the reference,

we've seen that the foot was traveling a bit backward

when leaving the ground.

So I'm pushing a bit the curve on frame 22

as if it was some kind of overshoot.

We get a smooth arc in the curve and then an acceleration

toward the next contacting pose.

And as shown in the reference,

the foot travels a bit further than the contacting pose

before contacting on frame 32.

So the value of the curve on frame 31 is lower,

so further forward than on frame 32.

We'll go back in the front of view,

press Q to access my quick favorite

and update the motion path.

We now need to work on the up and down of the foot.

As you can see, it's very linear for the time being.

As seen in the reference, the highest point for the foot

is going to be just after leaving the ground

and just before hitting the ground.

I'm raising the control point on frame 24

and then I will lower it next to the passing pose.

We want the toes to almost touch the ground.

I will move the previous extreme up from from 24 to frame 23

to have a smoother motion.

I will also move the next extreme on frame 30

so that the foot gets high and then slap onto the ground.

And now we can see that we have a motion path

that is very close to what we had on the reference.

Note that the keys on the contacting frames

all have their end-alls set to vectors

so that we don't have any easing

when the foot is leaving the ground

or when it's contacting the ground.

We can now switch to front view,

editing the left to right motion

is going to be pretty straightforward.

I will frame the curve

and I will give it a little parabolic shape,

making sure that the foot is at its extreme on the side

that whenever we are hitting the passing pose.

We are starting to get decent results

regarding the location of this foot controller.

Let's work on the foot roll.

I prefer to start walking on the rotation

using the heel controller

because it's the main rotation controller of the foot,

at least on the walk cycle.

And then, I will get back on the foot to tweak

and input some subtle rotation to the foot.

To touch the ground, the foot should be slapping.

Though, I want a fast motion between the contacting pose

and the flat foot position.

So I will offset the key with a value of zero

on the frame 1 and I will switch the end-all to vector.

This way, the foot is getting flat on the ground

over one frame with a clean curve.

After the passing pose when the heel is raising,

I want a slight acceleration.

So I want my curve to look more like a parabolic one.

Also, I need to offset a bit

the moment the heels start to raise.

It's just after the passing pose,

around frame 10, not frame 8.

I will fix this a little later.

Right now, I'm just pushing the pose

to make sure that the foot has a smoother motion.

I want to hold a bit the pose

where the foot is pointing down.

So I will duplicate the key on frame 24 to frame 25

and create a slight plateau.

Then I want to create the flapping or whipping motion,

meaning that the toes will get higher

just before they hit the ground.

So I need to push the curve down

just before the contacting pose.

From there, I will kind of fine tune each pose.

It's more about motion feeling,

that's something I can't really explain.

And I will fix the moment the heel raise

by delaying it by two frames.

Next, we are going to work on the X rotation

of the main toe controller.

We're going to have the same behavior

as the tale of this hero character.

It will have a subtle overlapping or full of emotion.

In this case, we will be only animating

the axialer rotation of the toes.

It's very simple.

We want the toes to slightly drag.

So basically, you want them

to point toward their previous position.

As the foot flap on the ground and is getting flat,

I will slightly raise the toes.

Then later, I will make them flat

and then switch their end-alls to vector.

Then working on the moment the foot leave the ground,

I will switch the end-all on frame 20 to vector

to make sure that the rotation of the toes is accelerating

as they are pulled backward.

And I will make sure I have some dragging of the toes

until frame 30, not bending them too much

or the motion too stylized

and the foot will look very loose.

And as I a hard time getting the right position

for the toes on frame 30,

it's simply add another key frame here and animate on ones.

Animating on ones means that you add a key frame

or drawing on each single frames.

It's perfect when you have a complex motion

on very few frame to key each frame

and work each poses, one by one.

With our toes now polished, we can switch back to the foot

and work a bit on its rotation.

We will keep it simple and only work

on the Z quadrillion rotation.

Foot motion when going into details can be very complex.

We want to push the level of realism further.

You need to study your reference frame by frame.

Check out which part of the foot is contacting first,

whether the weight is more on the edge,

on the middle of the foot, on the ball of the foot,

et cetera, is there any squashing

or slight shaking motion of the ankle?

All those subtle movement brings what we call texture

to the animation and we'll make your animation looks less CG

and more subtle.

So in the end, I'm just slightly pushing the rotation

we have already input during the blocking.

And I will just input a bit of rotation toward the inside

when the foot is leaving the ground and toward the outside

when the foot is getting to the next contact pose.

This will translate the fact that there is more pressure

under the big toe when the foot is leaving the ground.

While we favorize weight over the outer edge of the foot

when contacting.

It's a subtle weight transfer from the outside of the foot

to the inside of the foot,

between the contacting pose and the pushing pose.

So we can translate this by inputting a bit of rotation

when the foot is leaving the ground toward the inside.

This is not a golden rule because it will vary

from people to people based on your weight,

the size of your hips, your orientation of your knees,

even a subtle foot rotation

will bring personality to your character.

Before we mirror the animation,

we need to slightly rework the knee.

So basically, we just need to rework

the left to right motion of the pole targets.

I will just input a bit of delay

based on the rotation of the foot.

Most of the time, your foot and your knee are aligned.

So when the toe is pointing inward,

I will push the knee in between inward.

And when the toe is pointing on the outside, guess what?

I will push a bit, the pole target, on the outside.

The X and Y curve don't have that much inference,

I prefer to remove any key frames that are not set to zero.

Once my keys were more or less defined,

I've moved them away one from the other

to get a smoother and slower motion.

With this to avoid any noisy motion of the knee.

There can be a bit of noise on the knee motion

during the impact, especially on the heavy character,

you will use the knee tweaker

and input a bit of up and down motion

whenever the feet are contacting the ground.

But since our character is pretty lightweight,

I prefer to keep a smooth motion of the knee

following the foot.

With the whole leg finally polished,

we can now mirror the motion onto the other leg.

This is something we have already done several time

in this course so I guess you know all to do it,

but I will repeat the process.

I first selected all the controller of the left leg.

Press Alt H to reveal all the curve

and press A to select them all, then press control C

to copy those curve.

Then I will select all the controller of the opposite leg.

I will also press Alt H

to make sure that there is no curve hiding.

I will select all the keys but the one on frame 0

and delete them.

Then I will select all the keys

and press control shift to V.

Now, both my legs are moving the same way.

I will press shift to D to duplicate X and 32

to offset by 32 frame.

That way, I have two cycle for the right leg

and now I can offset it back by half the length

of the motion by pressing G, X, and minus 16.

I have an alternate motion of both legs.

I will go on frame 0 and insert a key frame

on all the channels.

Then select those key frame,

press V and switch them to three.

This way their end-all curvature won't change

if I remove the previous keys.

Then press Shift to D to duplicate those frame

and move them on frame 30 to sway the first and last keys

of the cycle of the same and we can remove any keys

after frame 32 and before frame 0.

And we now have both our legs polished

and we can jump into the next video

where we will be polishing the torso.