tried out some new actions for my character. the walk cycle now has more shoulder movement to emphasize comfidence as well as some added hip movement. i think it generally better than the last and this particular animation he's kinda brushing his chin checking out his world and feeling kinda badass. i sometimes do several versions of the same basic cycles. this way i save out the animation and pick out any of the single or multiple movements and retarget e.g just a hip or finger movement using motion mixer within max allwoing me to further offset, overlay and tweak the timing. on the final animation i can then even import these animations on an animation layer and play around with the value to give it more or less of that motion and perhaps bake the whole animation when im satisfied with the result.

and finally for now.

Nice job guys

Ok guys, i'm back to work! And 'no' I didn't chicken out on the project. lol

I'm creating a 30 frame custom walk cycle using POSER's Animation palette's unique controls. Using the custom poses I created and posted earlier I was able to create a sketchy walk cycle to be fine tuned later on. The Start pose (Walk pose right front.jpg) occupies frame 1, the next pose (Walk pose left front.jpg) occupies frame 15 and the final pose (Walk pose right front.jpg) is repeated at the end of the cycle (Frame 30) to blend in during the loop.

Here are the animation videos to back up the jpegs.

The next phase involves tweaking or fine-tuning the walk cycle animation. As you may have noticed, the animax seems to be skating or sliding along the floor due to the sketchy use of only 3 poses in the walk cycle. By creating keyframes and including more alternate poses in-between we can achieve a much smooter walk, with the feet stepping on and lifting off the ground, arms swinging out a bit more, head bob and corresponding upper body movements on the abdomen and chest.

Finally, the completed walk cycle animation videos

Now with all that walk cycle creation headache, I seem to have forgotten my original storyline, sigh! - lol

Also, for the benefit of those who don't have time to download and playback the mp4's here are some gif animations for the walk cycles.

What's up dudes? No flames anymore? Aww come on guys! Wake up! We've only done walk cycles and everyone's near given up. I thought we had at least 8 entries on this challenge?

@Kemjisuper
Far from it man. My nairaland account got suspended and i could not post anything. Thankfully I am back. Here is my final clip.
I don't have time to clean up my key but I think the animation is ok.

@OKX
Where are you?

@9tLecturer
Whats happening?

@all
Where is everybody?

quite a disapointing end to a challenge with a very enthusiatic start. the last 2 days of the challenge and not a single post or wip's on the thread, was all the discouragement i needed to carry on with something else. guess life gets in the way sometimes.

so much for cg in Nigeria

yeah u still gotta do ur part tho. if we dont who will?

aww man! c'mon guys- no death tolls for the challenge yet!
my bad !
left civilization 4 a bit- couldn't communicate, but thats over now!

and NO the challenge isn't OVER!!
heck, its barely started! true, we have all failed the 14 day deadline, so we (hang our heads in collective shame and. .) officially shift for another fortnight.

remember this was meant to be a learning (teething) experience. so we now know wot works and wot doesn't.

personally, i am back at my slave desk and will be churning out the next batch of clips from 2mrw.

@ xothermik
dude, dont quit on us. need u in this, man!

@ aphek
good going man. we are still on track!

@ kemjisupreme
thanx for lighting them fires. we stagger but don't fall. lol


@ all
we owe it to our art to step up and finish this project.
those that haven't started, consider this a second chance!

c'mon guys . . .

ok then ill get bak 2 it as soon as i can.
my character was fuming on his way out of the building

Em, what happened?I was so expecting to see the winner.I guess we are all really busy.Well,I just wanna say I am very impressed with all the videos I have seen on this thread.Great job guys.

Hi Guys! I've not logged in for quite a while.Since it's not too late to join,then i'm in.

...

omg!
guys c'mon!
yeah, i know i said i was back- had to make an unscheduled outta shore trip (no xcuse tho!)
but c'mon- i thot u guys were passionate about this too.

well, my bad! wont recur!

welcome aboard turag and NWFX!
well enuff talk, i s'pose its output that will revive this kid!

@ all
U HEAR!!!
THIS HEARTS STILL TICKING!!!!!!!!!!!

INPUT/OUTPUT PEOPLE!!!!

@ xothermik
dude u even quit to do a 2d thing! sad!
well pls get ur gear and re-hop onboard.

and this time, please output ppl!
i DEFINITELY have NO travel plans for the next fortnight!

next posts are 2mrw!

okay. added the pause at the intersection and the look both ways.
next, he'll cross the street, get distracted and bump into a pole.

the attached are still ruff clips, but i want to rough out the whole animation then fine tune later.

guys, participation pls!

@okx
- What happened to his glasses in the last clip you added?
- For a head turn, the character should blink once and not twice.
- The blink should occur at the lowest point of the head turn not before or after.
- Did you and the first blink to indicate anticipation?
- The eyes should lead the turn before the head follows.
- For a close-up shot of the head, attention to details matters alot.

@ aphek
as usual i applaud ur eye for detail.
i wasn't really going into facial animation, the blink and eye movement were afterthoughts and haven't been fine-tuned (but helpful tips u raised)
and since i did dabble with the facial animation, i guess i have to do it properly (darn it!) lol

yeah, the dude is missing his glasses
am not at my regular workstation at the moment, so i don't have access to the original xter.
i disagree with the blink theory tho, wot u stated are just broad guidelines not hard-n-fast rules. u can showcase a lot about the personality of ur xter by using different blink types- from rapid to slow.

quite right about the eyes leading the turn- still haveta fine-tune that.
all-in-all, great analysis!
thanx man

wots with ur clip? u haven't finished fine-tuning, have u?


@ others
step up guys!
where are y'all @?

@okx
How many frames does it takes to turn a head? And how many frames does it takes to do a blink?
Two blinks for that matter. Add it up. You will see the essence of using a single blink. Anyway, everyone
is entitle to his opinion.
The keys on my animation needs cleaning. Cleaning keys is where the bulk of the work is. I left everything at linear keys in order to meet the deadline you set. We were given two weeks to do this simple animation and till now we are still dragging this. For me two weeks is two weeks. I am not doing anything more until the next challenge.
Cheers man.

I love challenges. A shot from a short i pray to complete if power supply improves a little more. I'd like to render the animation.

Naija SWAT. its a funny story tomorow's policing in naija.

Nice going. Can't wait to see ur shot.

whats taking so long guys? well here is my own take.Its clunky but its just a try i could do better if i spend more time to smooth out the keyframes but i don't wanna spend forever trying to make it perfect ending with nothing.the entire animation took less than 5 hours to blockout and a day to tweak.I rigged the T-rex way before the challenge.The T-rex animation was more fun for me because its my rig and i had issues with the low max rig for reasons i'm yet to figure out.Some of the controls didn't just work fine for me(max 2010 version) but i found workarounds and more tweaks to make it work.The rig is nice but don't know why some of the spinners won't work even though they're connected.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvoR9lxYjao

I'm also starting a test project where i would animate a "presidential cg character"to this,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9sLfCeKC-E

Its simple,replace the presido with cg character i just downloaded.The rig seems to be working fine.

This clip is the first blocking pass where i just animated the pelvis controller


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkC5ce1abac

Its still WIP so lookout for more posts

Lets keep this thread going guys, More posts and comments.

@NWFX
Nice. i like your interpretation of the contest. The animation on the t-rex threw me off, the t-rex appears to be weightless.

Generally, it's nice. I also like the camera work. Keep it up.

@NWFX
Nice storytelling. But the basics, walkcycle, personality etc need more work. Again nice work.

hmm a t rex. quite a gargantuan distraction  .  anyway like my comrades pointed out a bit of a problem with the walk cycles but the main qualm i have is the t rex jump. the velocity curve is a tad bid too uniform. and there wasnt enough recoil on impact to exude a convincing impact. but overall i'd say its a nice piece. my best part was the pole hit. i see u didnt let your fume fx and dreamscape skill go to waste on this one . i use max 2010 too and dont seem to have any issues with the max rig on this end. yeah also nextime conform with the rules of the thread and supply w.i.p's as it unfolds and not just finished works. we are rying to learn from each other's successes and mistakes.