Thorn front view walk with smart bones

[neeters_guy]

I've been having some trouble making a convincing front view walk using bone scaling. In a front view walk, the shin and foot have 4 distinct positions: forward, down, back, and up. Simply scaling the bones makes the legs look flat. I decided to use smart bones to do the actual foreshortening of the legs.

Here's an example using the Thorn character showing the difference between scaling bones and using smart bones.


I also used a "hold bone", which is an extra bone to hold points in place so they aren't affected by scaling of the shin bone. This made it a little easier to figure out where to move the points in the smart bone action.



Here's the Thorn rig if you're curious about the setup.

[willf]

This is good timing for me, as I am currently stymied in creation of a front walk cycle. Unfortunately I don't have the latest version of ASP, so my smartbones don't cover layer and shape reordering. But that's not where I'm stuck.

I'm having a hard time getting the rear foot to look right when it's in the "back" position, just before it lifts of the ground (The front foot is making contact at the same time). The shin is bent forward all the way, and only the ball of the foot touches the ground. For some reason I just can't get it to look right. It either looks like a regular, though flattened, foot, or it looks like just the front section of the foot (the toes and ball) and the rest of the foot looks like it has disappeared altogether.

Harumpf.

Any way your post was helpful and timely. I'll slog through it eventually.

[neeters_guy]

Thanks. Yep, front walk/runs are difficult. That gif was just a demo of using smart bone to create foreshortening, the walk itself isn't that polished (you may have noticed there's no "back" foot view. ).

Anyway, here's the same idea applied to arm bends (and associated rig):



Again, the walk is really stiff, but I think it shows the potential of using smart bones to solve limb foreshortening.

[lwaxana]

dang, nice rigging, Neeters! I love the idea of using smart bones for foreshortening. And all the switch layers you created for the hands and feet really sell the sense of depth. Thank you for sharing the file!