Thinking Outside the Box:
Walking the Walk

By Paul "Villam" Steed

So we have her looking good in the side view. What about the front? Let’s see…

Click to view Walk3.avi (103k)

Yechh. No ‘tude, Shauna. We got the fries but we forgot the shake. To fix it we need to simply bring her foot in a line and rotate her waist into each stride. Since we’ve previously set keyframes at each frame in the side view we need to go through each one and slide the foot over to that convenient center line. First the left…

…then the right.

Looks good but we still need some torso swing for more…ooomph. So at frame 1 and 15 we rotate her torso into her arm swing in counterbalance to the leg she’s thrown forward. And you know what? That’s it. She’s walkin’ the walk.

Click to view walk4.avi (113k)

Naturally adjustments to the gait and stance vary per character, but regardless treat it and all your animations like an outline. Block-in the more basic parts of the anim for timing and mechanical reasons. Try and let the computer do as much of the work as possible while gently nudging the mesh where it needs to go to look right. That’s the key after all. Making the stuff look right.

In animation image really is everything. Right, Babe? Say buh-bye, Shauna…

Click to view walk5.avi (118k)

Later

ps

- Paul Steed is an incredibly opinionated 3D artist for id Software.