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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 22</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Thinking 
          Outside the Box</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Walking the Walk</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Paul &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:paul@loonygames.com">Villam</a>&quot; 
          Steed</font></b></font></p>
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        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">For today’s exciting walk 
          animation tutorial I’ll be using 3DSMax R2.5 and the plugin known as 
          Character Studio R2. However, I’ll be focusing on technique over tool 
          features or functionality so you can apply the lesson to any package. 
          Thusly you need to understand really complex terminology like <i>rotation</i> 
          and <i>view</i> and <i>axes</i> (brrrr…tough stuff, huh?)</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">When doing a walk cycle you 
          need to adopt the same rule that applies to splitting a pair in Blackjack: 
          make one good before the other. This means make the walk look good in 
          one axis or view then switch to make it look good in another.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah, here’s our lovely model 
          Shauna, now.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="shauna01.jpg" width="416" height="171"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Accompanying the ravishing 
          Shauna is her wire frame counterpart and Biped ensemble. The latter 

          of course serves as a skeleton and is what’s actually animated. Combined 
          with Physique, biped deforms Shauna’s mesh accordingly as we animate 
          her. Most modeling and animation packages use this sort of bones-within-the-mesh 
          approach so it should be a familiar concept. But, as I said before this 
          isn’t a tutorial on how to use Character Studio (next time, maybe), 
          it’s a lesson on making a decent walk cycle. For clarity sake I’ll refrain 
          from showing the Biped and sexy Shauna only, just wanted to show what 
          the Biped looked like.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So going back to the Blackjack 
          corollary we’ll start in a side view (right) and get ready to position 
          the model for the first step in the animation.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="shauna02.jpg" width="101" height="283"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now we move her arms and 
          legs into an extended stride position. For the sake of this tutorial 
          we’ll put the right foot and left arm forward, and the left foot and 
          right arm back.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="shauna03.jpg" width="146" height="233"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Don’t worry too much about 
          foot or head position/rotation at this point. Let’s just get the gross 
          positioning in. Another thing. Keep frame 0 your default position and 
          move to frame 1 for this first pose. Do this for two important reasons. 
          One, do it to give you a fall back non-animated pose, and two, do it 
          to keep your total frame count easy to follow (i.e. on frame 10 you 
          have a total of ten frames of animation; if the first frame of animation 
          was 0 in the walk cycle then frame 10 would denote eleven frames of 
          animation at that point. <i>Verstehs du mich</i>?)</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Next we set the other gross 
          default pose at frame 8. Why 8? Glad you asked. A general rule of thumb 
          in a walk cycle is match your total number of frames for one cycle to 
          your playback frame rate. In other words a single walk loop is about 
          one second long. Our playback here is at 15 frames per seconds but, 
          although I’ve noticed most are odd-numbered when dealing with motion 
          captured walks and runs, even-numbers work better for key framing purposes. 
          Frame 8 is the halfway point to 14 frames. Thusly, we add 7 to 1 and 
          advance to frame 8 (do not pass go; do not collect $200) and reverse 
          the position. I basically grab the left arm and right foot and move 
          them back to line up with their brethren appendages then eyeball the 
          other two into the position.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="shauna04.jpg" width="370" height="300"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now if you were to play back 
          the anim at this point you see this very mechanical motion of legs and 
          arms exchanging their forward and back position. Since this is a looping 
          animation, we need to get Shauna back to her starting position of right 
          foot forward. To do this simply copy keys on frame 1 to frame 15. 15 
          you say? Yes, 15 because even though the animation spans 14 frames (1 
          – 14) copying frame 1 to frame 14 would result in a hitch as the frames 
          loop into themselves and repeat the first and last frame. Hence copying 
          to frame 15 leaves a smooth transition and no repeated frames.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="shauna05.jpg" width="376" height="200"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cool. We’ve blocked out the 
          rough frames for our walk cycle so it’s time to get busy. In a casual 
          walk your leg that stays in contact with the ground remains pretty straight 
          unless you’re crouch walking for a specific reason. The other leg is 
          basically dragged along and put forward as you essentially fall to the 
          ground. Walking is just a sequence of catching yourself as you successively 
          fall forward, right? Obviously. Thinking in terms of the falling and 
          catching helps keep your mind on <i>weighty</i> matters. Weight distribution 
          and balance are key to animating figures since there’s no real ground 
          for them to step on (unless you’ve got some swanky collision-detecting 
          IK solution going).</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><br>
        </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(<a href="index3.php">Continued 
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"> </font></i><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Thinking Outside the Box logo illustrated and is &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. 
        Thinking Outside the Box is &copy; 1999 Paul Steed. All other content 
        is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't even try it. We've got really big guns, and we're ripped, baby.</font></i></p>
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