Advanced Animation #6 Walking Animation

 

Advanced Animation (Introduction)

Date : October/18th/2023

Name : Mabuchi Arata

Lecture : Advanced Animation

Lecture's Name : Martin Chong Yuh Lin

ID : 03515789

1, Introduction

These 2 weeks, we've had a task to complete 2 different walk cycle according to the requirements shown in the myTimes. I had to observe the motion lf the 2 different walk cycle to understand each forms and resemble them into 3D polygon model in blender to visualise in my own way. Each 2 different walk cycle have different way to represent because of I had a lack of understanding blender techniques.

2, Research and Analyse

1, Vanilla walk

Unlike the observation I've done before, I went straight to create the motion of vanila walk which sound like normal walking. The first time I just resembles form of the character that looks like a normal walking, however, because of lack of knowledge about the timing and posing the character, the walking form of the character has been awkward as shown below.

1,1 First Vanilla walk

I struggled the form of walking because I tried to make a walking animation without references, therefore I had to create walking animation from start. I started from "understanding the motion of vanila walking by walking naturally", I walked around in my college hostel to observe my walking form to use as reference of my work. Sadly I did not record my walking but I've got several good ideas for my walking animation.

・Knees are not going to up so much.

・Foots are landing on ground from heel.

・Foots are not rising so high.

・Foots and hands are both moving opposite direction at same timing.

・I can use previous work as references. (but I did not used in this time.)

After struggling more to creating a model, I realised that the vanila walking doesn't have so much dynamic more so each body parts are not moving dynamically.

The vanila walk animation ended as simple animation and takes too much time to complete. To sum up, my creation process was started from understanding briefing techinique about parts placement, and assigning motion for each frames, then I reset all of creation first and rebuild the motion to finish my work. However, the work itself may be done much better way. (The improvement is explained in next section)

2, Attitude walking

Firstly, I have to appologize that the attitude walking might not be what it should means, when I checked the attitude walking in Youtube, I found the video shown below that the man walking aggresively with anger face, therefore I thought the attitude walking is something about walking with anger feelings or something. In the observation of attitude walking from Youtube videos, I've learnt these ideas as shown below. :

・Body should be squatted to express feelings.

・The head leans forward to express attitude feeling.

・Both foots are rising higher than normal (vanilla) walking.

・Arms are bending and moving much bigger than vanilla walking too.

・Face must be look angry to show its (attitude) feeling.

I used video I found on Youtube as references to make seceral list to make a much better walkiing animation. The video I used was called "Attitude Walk Loop Progression" shown below. The quality of walking animation has been improved much better by finding references.

2,1 Attitude walking reference

2,2 Foot close up

The point I focused on the production in this project was about the location of the foot. During the creation of vanilla walk, the foots tended to going further downwards or floating, therefore I was required to adjust the height of foot wisely by either adjusting height of foot each frames and using cycles in right frame (cycles can repeat the motion in selected frames therefore I had to select exact frames period to repeat the motion.)

2,3 Motion gradient

Walking animation can't be done just completing lower part, I was required to complete upper part too. Same as Lower part, I also have to make a motion that repeats in same period of time from 0 frame to 20 frames. Unlike vanila walking, the hand should move much more dynamucally, therefore I had to adjust the location of the hand for each frame much more bigger than vanilla walking's one. In the refered video the hands are going inner side when it goes to front, therefore I had to adjust the motion very carefully. The reason why I carefully adjust the hand shaking motion is because when I just made the first walking animation, the motion looks so robotic and not realistic, therefore I watched the refered video carefully to find ideas for poses in each frames. I also used similar effort in the spine motion in the animation. Each time the foots are rising to walking forward, the body looks lean to the side which the foot is rising up to go forward. Therefore I also rotate the spine when the foots are moving forward in each time.

2,4 Leaning Comparison

I also sttruggled in the head and eyes part, eah time I rotate body, the heads are moving so randomly and eyes are not looking one point and looking the points so differenyt, therefore I had to try to stuck heads and eyes to look at forward and front by adjusting rotation and position of it.

The part I regret not to do in the project was I should have used section called "root" in vanila walk. In blender file, there was a section called "root" which contrals the position of whole character modellings, I did not recogise this point and I tried to make a walking animation by moving foots, spine and heads position to move forward, but it cause distortion of the character model and I had to recreate animation from once. In the attitude walking, I used "root" that moves constantly. In attitude walking file, I made a attitude walking animation that moves each different body part in static location, then I used root that moves forward constantly. This must avoid distortion of the model, in fact, I used root to move modelling forward in attitude walking animation.

2,5 Root in 3D Modell

3, Final work

As I explained earlier, I reset all of my work to recreate my animation, therefore it took longer time than other my works to complete this project. First of all, the creating moion itself was quite interesting for me and it might be improved than pivot swinging animation. The process to adjusting rotation and placement was main point of this project so I tried my best to represent natural walking. They said that in the world of acting, the action should be overreacting than normal life, therefore I tried to move much more dramatically than normal working to impress attitude feelings.

3,1 Normal Walking

3,2 Attitude Walking

3,3 Final Comparison