So I have started and scratched this exercise a couple of times by now. At first I didn't think the translation would add that much hassle to it but maybe I was wrong. I rewatched the stomp videos to see what I was maybe missing and I think my mirroring poses was missing a couple of key steps, so maybe that will make my life easier now.
But that brought a couple of questions: is there a disadvantage to setting up the walk cycle a bit further (maybe not all the way polished, but close) on a stationary way and only then adding the translation bit?
And secondly, while I know every walk cycle is different, is there a disadvantage to maybe duplicating the action of the stationary walk entirely, and then using that as a starting point? Not now, since I need to practice it from scratch, but I'm wondering of a real-life more efficient way, maybe?
I don't know on the first question, but on the second one the answer is yes. Reusable pieces are definitely a way to go. That is why naming consistency is important. At the beginning it's better to do things from scratch each time until you get results you expect or, in my case, understand where I messed up when something goes wrong. Then it becomes easy to just adjust things you've already done.
Hey Nathi - good questions.
Create stationary first:
That's fine but but it's probably going to be harder to get your head around what you need to change on the curves to adjust it from stationary to translating.
What you can do is actually animate the root moving backwards in space, so the character stays in the same spot but it's a translating walk. You can then mute that root movement to switch between the 2 styles. Make sense?
Starting Point Animation:
Totally!.That's what the pros do ;)
Dwayne is spot on here. At first, practice actually doing it. But then it's a matter of working smarter not harder. We reuse animation all the time as a starting point, from entire cycles, to snippets of one shot in another.
This takes practice too, as it's probably going to be slower at first, but once you have a deep understanding of animation data and your work flow, you will know when it's faster to reuse something or start from scratch.
Sometimes you can even have 2 versions of a cycle you want to reuse (or take the highly polished one and strip it back to the key poses).
eg - walk_cycle_final and walk_cycle_poses
Hope that all makes sense.
Keep up the learning!
That's clever! A combo stationary + root. I'll try that after I figure this exercise out.
Yep, it all makes sense. I'll also play with copying animation data after I'm done with this course. I'm just glad to hear we can tweak to our hearts content and then use the hard earned smooth motion in other scenarios too. Thanks guys!