Walk cycle problem

[Hoptoad]

I can make a decent walk cycle, but there's a problem: the feet move at slightly different speeds. If I have a character walk on a floor made of one solid color (no texture), the problem is virtually impossible to detect. However, if I put the character on a floor with any texture (patterns, sidewalk seams, etc.), then the close foot is firmly planted, as expected, but the far foot slides a little on the down position. Only a tiny bit, but still. . .yuck.

Any tips?

I remember Victor posting a walk-cycle ruler to help animate a walk cycle, but I couldn't figure-out the process.

Thus far, I've been animating walk cycles while the character stays in place, like on a treadmill, then I use translate layer to move the character in a scene. I thought this was the preferred method in Moho. Do I need to animate the character moving left to right across the workspace, like frame-by-frame animators did in days of yore?

This is suddenly an issue because I need to put characters on textured floors for the first time, and I don't want any sliding.

Thanks.

[slowtiger]

You could put your in-place walking character inside a group folder and slide this with linear interpolation, then animate the walk.

[MrMiracle77]

If it feels like too much of a fight to get perfect, you can put a drop shadow down. Just a dark grey oval to cover up the interaction between the feet and the ground.

[Hoptoad]

You could put your in-place walking character inside a group folder and slide this with linear interpolation, then animate the walk.

Hey! That makes sense!

I need to STOP animating a walk cycle on a thin horizontal line and instead animate on a moving textured floor.

Thanks for the solution.

If it feels like too much of a fight to get perfect, you can put a drop shadow down. Just a dark grey oval to cover up the interaction between the feet and the ground.

Sir, how dare you try to insert shadows into my evenly-lit cartoon universe.

Good idea, though!

[Víctor Paredes]

Another option is to use additive cycles.
Maybe this old tutorial can help:

[Hoptoad]

I am doing something seriously wrong with the additive cycle. The character blinked back and forth as he walked. I thought maybe the problem was that I didn't use target bones, so I added target bones and started over, but the result was worse.

Based on the tutorial video recommended above, these are the steps I followed (in order):

frame 1: contact pose, freeze bones
frame 13: make opposite contact pose, translate eggman's bones to the right, freeze pose
25 copy/paste frame 1 onto frame 25, use onion skin to position
frame 7 and 19: lift foot
frame 4: move body downward
frame 10: move body upward
copy keyframes from frame 1, 4 and 10 and Paste Relative to onto frame 13
select all 25 keyframes, choose Cycle interpolation, Absolute frame 2, Additive Cycle=yes
click Play
watch eggman attempt to walk, but obviously in pain begging for death
delete keyframes, remember that I tried to learn additive a year or so ago

Before attempting to learn Additive Cycles, I made a simple armless character that has legs similar to the kind my characters often have nowadays (point binding, smart bones, far leg higher than close leg, foot-bending). Below is a link to the rig.

Would somebody animate the walk cycle and then upload the Moho file for me to study? Note: the stripes in the grass are only there to help notice foot-sliding, not to determine the length of stride.

The Moho file with the eggman rig:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m151xpu1picq ... .moho?dl=0

[slowtiger]

http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/eggman_s1.moho - my attempt. You see that I have just the bare minimum of keys: contact, passing, and that very important "put that foot down" after contact. All keys are "normal", nothing additive or so - fancy new stuff, we did animation withut this for centuries! (</old guy rant>). In many cases this would be enough, but from here on one can improve and add individuality.

Your problems may be caused by the too long steps Eggman takes - in a normal walk you'll have a distance of about one to one-and-a half feet between the feet positions. Also the body is a tad bit too high, this results in legs which are overstretched.

[Víctor Paredes]

Here's another version. The green bones are the only ones using Additive cycle. All the rest use normal cycles:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/406wycjb9t6wi ... .moho?dl=0

[SimplSam]

Just thought I would include the visuals of Victor's animation of Hoptoad's rig, as it is quite pleasing.