Over this past week, I have produced a Stylised Walk.
I chose to make the Stylised Walk in the Angry style. I can see model’s highest and lowest points of the character’s head in the reference picture. It is very convenient to position the height of the figure’s movements as it walks by the height of model’s head in the frame. The tendency of the figure’s movement is also greatest when figure’s head at its highest point.
I can see in frames 1, 15, and 28 the head is at its highest point, and one of the arms also raised to the highest point in this picture. With frame 15 as symmetry, the movements in frames 2,5,7,9,11,13 and 17,19,21,23,25,27 are exactly the opposite of left and right. For example, the action of the left hand in frame 9 is same as the action of right hand in frame 23. It’s also same as the legs. In this case, the head’s height is same in frames 9 and 23.
Before making it, I reflected on what I needed to improve from last week’s homework [Cycle Walk].
1. The character’s legs were too straight during the walk, and the whole figure looked a bit stiff.
2. The character’s waist should also be raised or lowered during the walk. At the same time, the figure’s upper body needs to form a [S] curve with the legs.
3. The character needs to walk with a swinging neck, rather than like a wooden man.
4. Make sure that the feet, do not look like slip during the walking.
I’ve learned from my last production, so let’s go to a new work!
Here’s the reference video I found. It’s a Stylised Walk [Angry Walk].
I think this video is a good way to help me observe the details of the model as she walks. For example, the waist, the upper body, etc. Also, the orientation of the legs and knees.
This video has side and front views. I think it’s helped me observe the details of the video model’s walk. As the figure steps forward, the figure’s waist is raised and lowered in line with the movement of the legs. More specifically, the left side of the character’s waist and hips raised as the character’s left leg steps forward. As well as this, the body’s center of gravity shifts as the character walks.
The main difference between Stylised Walk and Cycle Walk, I think, is the different movements and rhythms of movement. A Stylised Walk with personalization will have more detail. For example, a Cycle Walk might be a normal slow walk, whereas a Stylised Walk, which I chose to refer to, would be faster and more forward-leaning in the upper body.
Before I start animating, I create a shortcut to the skeleton controller with all the controls selected, which makes it easier to create the keyframe for my subsequent animations. Once all the selected steps have been selected in the Script Editor, I copy and paste them into MEL and drag and drop the middle mouse button into the property bar above. This way, during the animation process, I can create the keyframe directly by selecting the shortcut and then selecting all of the controllers.
But this step needs extra attention. Even though I selected tools all, there are still two controllers that are not selected. There may be a problem with one of the steps in the program. During my production, I noticed that I didn’t select left foot and waist controls. Luckily I was able to save my work in time by making two steps and checking them. The solution is simple: When I make a keyframe, I will select the two controllers individually. Overall, it was quite convenient.
This is the process I used to make this step, and it also helped me better to understand the body joints that how to control each curve.
Rigging
If you watch my video, you will see that the controller was deformed when I selected it. Sometimes the controller looks like a broken biscuit or a sharp spike. It looks awful, and it’s difficult to choose. Especially with the finger controller on the back of the hand, there is no way to select the original rectangular area. Only select the spiky part will work.
t doesn’t look good. But fortunately, it doesn’t affect the use of the controllers. All the controllers still work smoothly. There is no wear of the model. The model weights are well-produced and rotating or moving the controllers does not cause the model to wear out.
Now for the character walk. This is my storyboard based on character movement. It will help me to see the connections between key movements.
Start making the first version of the campaign.
For this work, I will make adjustments to the full-body controller at the same time. During the production of the Walk Cycle, I found that make legs and waist of the figure separately and subsequently adjusting the waist controller. This action would result in a deformation of the figure’s legs. This time, the distance of the model will walk still determined at the beginning of the production, with one step in the waist being 13.895 on the z-axis and one step between the legs being 13.452 on the z-axis.
When looking at the reference video, I noticed that the figure leans forward and clenches her fists before she starts to walk.
This picture is the animation curves of the right-hand’s controller’s movement. In the video, the character goes from no movement to an angry walk. In this process, the hand is tightened and keep this action. But otherwise only the wrist changes the data. When the character moves her arm as she walks, the wrist also moves in the direction of the arm’s movement.
The below image shows the animation curves of the figure’s right hand after I created the keyframe.
This video is the first Playblast.
In this version, I noticed that the movement of the character’s arms looked very unnatural, so I made some adjustments.
Because the keyframes are so dense, there are some pauses between the action. The arms even look like they are being swung outwards by some mysterious force. I chose to delete some of the keyframes with smaller adjustments first. This time the all-controller applet I made earlier comes in handy, as this setting helps me to select all the controllers on the keyframe to delete quickly. Then I modified each keyframe and adjusted the keyframe animation curve.
This picture is the arm controller animation curve after the adjustment.
This picture is an animation curves panel for all body controllers of the character.
Let’s see my second Playblast.
Add the character’s [angry] face.
Basic on the character’s facial expression, I add the character’s eye changes. At the beginning of this part, I want to take 12 frames as an interval. The model opens her eyes at frame 0, close eyes at frame 12, and then open eyes at frame 24. But after playblast, I found that the action of closing the eyes of the character was too slow. It seemed that the character didn’t wake up. In order to correct this situation, I try to shorten the time that close character’s eyes. If the character closes her eyes at frame 12, I will make keyframes for the eye-opening action on frames 9 and 15. The whole process of closing eyes only takes three keyframes.
The below picture is an animated curved panel about the eyes’ movement.
Final Rending Video: