Need help regarding Walk Behavior

[rooniboy]

Hello,

I am working on a series where i need my characters to walk up to a stationary football and then kick it. I can use the dragger to kick the ball, but i cannot use dragger along with the Walk Behavior. It just messes up the feet. How can i get this done ?

I have read somewhere that i can use separate bodies for two tasks, but i can not get my head around this. If this is the only way to do what i am looking to do, then can any one please explain how do i create two separate bodies ?

[KJerryK]

You might try this --

First record the walk behavior, using the keyboard input to start and stop. Then, at the stop frame, do the dragging.

[KJerryK]

Here's an example

[rooniboy]

Thank you for your response.

So here is what i did your suggestion. I added the walk behavior to my character and then recorded him running and It looked great. Then, at the stop frame, i edited my character to add draggers to its feet. I recorded him kicking the ball, and it looked good. But when i play the whole recording, it messes up the feet. Feet looks like they are sticking to the ground.

Here is what it looks like. Its my first time exporting a GIF, so please bear with me.

[KJerryK]

In my example, I just used the fully rigged Walkbot puppet available in the start screen, and added a draggable tag to the middle of the right foot. So you could look at that and compare it with the rigging on your puppet to see if there are any differences.

I did try to replicate your problem, and here's what I got when the legs are not crowned. So you might check on that.

[alank99101739]

Regarding draggers on the feet, I am reminded of some other threads when you put multiple dragger behaviors on a puppet. It can be useful as recording for the second dragger showed you the current values for the first dragger, making recording of drags on top of drags easier.

But what seemed to happen was it averaged (?) the two dragger behavior values for X and Y. I am wondering if something similar with draggers and the walk behavior is going on - that when you add the dragger, there is a competition between the dragger you add and the handle used by the walk action.

So if KJerryK’s ideas don’t work (he seems to know what he is talking about!), it may be you cannot put draggers and walk behavior on the same puppet. If you end up with that result, what you could try is to duplicate the puppet so you have two puppets with the same artwork - one with the Walk Behaviour added, the other with draggers. Because they share the same artwork file they will always look the same. Then in a scene add the two puppets, so the first puppet is visible for running, then the second puppet becomes visible (and the first invisible) and you use draggers to line it up as close as possible to the last frame of the walk behavior puppet.

But I would definitely try KJerryK’s suggestions first!

[rooniboy]

Everything works fine except the fact that i cannot make the puppet with Walk Behavior stand still with fixed pins.

Now there are two things i can do to tackle this, First, i can use the Walk Behavior with fixed pins and when its walking i can zoom in on the body while cropping out the feet. It might look good as i have watched a lot of TV cartoon series where i rarely see the full body when character walks and it looks good.

Second, duplicating the whole puppet still remains to be the last resort but still that comes with few drawbacks. I have previously tried it, but it almost doubles the work i have to do for a 2 minute animation. Then there is time when you cannot perfectly sync both recordings together in Premiere Pro. I used to cover it with sudden zoom in or out so people do not notice it as much.

Thanks for your response. I have learned a lot from this forum.

[alank99101739]

I personally gave up on the walk behaviour and do exactly what you say (waist up shots). I could not get it quite like I wanted. So things like torso close ups with a close up of the ball being kicked etc can look good, if it fits in with the overall feel of the video. I may give it another go one day, but as you say, ultimately you need to get animations delivered.

Friendship (Extra Ordinary, Episode 1) - YouTube is the only video I have fully completed yet, but has the torso walking approach, including towards the camera at different angles.

In case of any use, I now do the bobbing motion by setting Anchor Point Y for the global puppet position, then create a series of “humps” for each bob up and down. To expand, I record a new value of Position Y (some use the “record 1-frame or record 2 -frames” capability - I just start recording, set the Y value, then trim the start off the recording. So the default Y is 0, and the Track has the new Y value. I then trim to around 0.75 seconds for walking, 0.5 seconds for running and blend the two ends so it looks like a hump. I then duplicate the track and position it for as many footsteps as I need. I may also do a blend for the overall Anchor X and Y (and scale) for the overall movement of the puppet (scale is for walking towards or away from camera).

[rooniboy]

Amazing Video. I will be looking forward to seeing more on your channel.

Here is what i created with duplicated bodies. One with Walk behavior and other with draggers.

England Vs Netherlands 1-0 Highlights - YouTube

It looks weird when the walking puppet meets the one with draggers at 0:20 sec mark. Is there a way to cover this up in Premiere pro so people cannot notice it ?

[alank99101739]

Fun little video!

Are you talking about the front character jumping slightly, a few frames before you cut to a different zoom level? You can certainly use Premier Pro to trim out frames from a video - but if you added the audio track in Animator, then you can have problems as the music would stutter as well.

And if that is not what you mean, I have watched a few times and don’t notice what you mean - you may be more sensitive to it as the creator than others watching it.

This is my first time doing any serious animation (or even drawing for that matter!!), so one of my lessons was that a cartoon is a cartoon - it does not have to be 100% realistic. In fact, 100% realistic would no longer be a cartoon. So its okay to look a bit funny - as long as it always looks like that. People expect consistency, not perfection. (Well, that’s my personal opinion anyway! 😉

[rooniboy]

Yes, i am talking about the frame when the front character jumps. It is when i merged the two puppets together.

But i think you are right, messing around with duplicating bodies increase the amount of work. After watching your video, i have made up my mind about doing waist up shots. It not only saves a lot of time but also looks good. And after all this is only the start and things will definitely get better with future releases and experience.

It was really nice talking to you. Thank you so much.

[alank99101739]

If you run out of options, sometimes I just do two different scenes and carefully splice them together in premier pro. Or single frame dragging.

I remember one crosseyed scene  wanted. I tried to do it with extra behaviors etc on the eyes , but ended up just photoshopping the couple of frames I needed it for in a few seconds.