Walk cycle - Part 2

For the walk cycle, there were three major problems which made the animation look unrealistic:

• First of all, the feet weren't flat on the ground and shifted up and down as they ran along the floor.

• Secondly, the feet moved back at an inconsistent speed; this would look terrible in a game engine as it would look as if he was sliding along the ground.

• The third big problem was actually to do with the chest, as the big 'X' printed on his suit was stretching strangely with each step; this was because the vertex weights going down the chest were not smooth enough.

In order to make the feet stay flat on the ground I completely re-did the leg movements using sliding keys. As I said at the end of my last walk cycle blog post, sliding keys set the affected body part(s) to have IK handles instead of FK handles. I go into more detail on the importance of FK and IK in a previous blog post.

To get the speed of the foot movement current, I used the 'Pos Curve' dropdown to make the Y axis as straight as possible as the foot slides across the floor; I then gave it a smooth curve as it lifts back in front of him.

Fixing the chest was easy, as it only required me to select loops of vertices around his waist and then change their weights to give a smoother gradient between the chest and torso.

See the current walk cycle in motion below, alongside a comparison with the old one. Although the changes might appear subtle, they make a big difference to the animation as a whole. You might also note that I doubled the length of the new walk cycle in order to make him blink every 8th step, and also flared his nostrils in and out to make him breath.