Walk cycle: how to smooth out knee joint snapping?🦵

[alexstreltsov]

Hi there!

My name is Alex, and I'm the Creative Director at Babubi Games. Right now, we're working on character and environment animation for our debut video game, The Heirloom, inspired by the atmosphere of the Hebrides and rich Scottish folklore.



We've run into the following issue:

We're completely happy with the walk cycle animation for Marla, our main character, with just one exception — we simply can't find an elegant way to eliminate the sharp bending and straightening of her legs at the knee joint. In faster-paced animations, like running, it's either absent or barely noticeable, but in the slow walk it's very prominent, and we've completely run out of ideas on how to fix it

Please take a look at the clip below. I'm hoping someone out there can point us toward the right, elegant solution!



We're also looking for a Moho specialist for the role of 2D Skeletal Animation Consultant. If anyone's interested, you can find more details here.

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions

[heyvern]

smart bones. best bet for a simple basic joint like that. with smart bones you can make the knee shape any way you prefer. just do a search for smart bones moho there are a bazillion videos of various ways to do it.

[synthsin75]

For simple legs like that, Bone>Create Smooth Joint for Bone Pair would also work well.

[alexstreltsov]

Hey, guys!

Thanks a lot for your suggestions, but we've already found a fix.

The were two main reasons of the issue:

• Because of our needs, we started to animate from a non-common position. We should start animating from the standard pose and then simply shift the playback start point as needed to avoid the mistakes.

• We didn't notice a few not the best smoothing options we set earlier.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your support! Have a wonderful weekend

P. S. Sorry for the delayed reply — it seems like I missed the notification for some reason.

[Greenlaw]

Sorry, I'm a little late to the party, but here's another tip for future use: Add some Max IK Stretching in the leg bones (Constraints panel), and animate with them slightly stretched when they are fully extended (in other words, raise the COG bone). This will prevent any 'popping' in the knee as the character's body moves over a leg.