So I've been reading a lot about how the old "Move forward" is obsolete, and I should use a motion path and motion puppet instead. Fair enough.

So can someone point me to a tutorial that tells me how to achieve the simplest of things... a character begins at idle, starts a walk, follows a path, ends his walk, goes back to idle. This is what the old "Move Forward" used to do, but to achieve the same sequence of events using Motion Puppet seems ridiculously hard. I can sort of get a transition from the idle motion into the "Walk start" motion, but then a smooth transition into "walk end" seems near impossible--his feet never line up properly, and no matter how I adjust there is always popping or sliding. And if you want him to hit a specific mark (say, in front of a chair or at the edge of a cliff), it gets even more difficult.

Can someone tell me the easy way to achieve this with a nice, polished motion?

Welcome to the Forum:)

1) Most Characters have a Walk/Run Forward Right-Click Command. If your Character only has Move forward as some do, Select a Character Template that does & Export it's Persona to your Desktop & then Import it into your Character's Persona & then Select Walk Forward & Click on the point where you want your Character to Walk Forward to.

2) Mark had an excellent Tutorial for a Character starting along a Path. Stopping mid-way & then continuing to walk along the Path. It might have been included in the iClone Wiki HERE; (Link to be added). Wiki Links to this YouTube Video Tutorial based on iC5, but it isn't Mark's. However, it should do you nicely:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEnRetrPtIQ&feature=youtu.be  

ADDED - That Tut is by iClone Power User; Igor (Kurzal). It's very good. 

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"Walk Forward" is no good because it won't allow me to add in gesticulations and so forth without eliminating the character's forward motion.

But I'll check out the tutorial. Thanks!

Tutorial is good, but like every other such tutorial I've seen, it does not show how to have the character perform a "walk start" and "walk end". The walk is just started at frame 1 and abruptly stops at the end. I need to know how to (easily) do a walk with a very smooth, natural start and stop, that still allows me to follow a path and use motion puppet to create arm and head gestures during the walk. I have yet to find a tutorial that does this.

Again "walk forward" gives me the natural start and stop I need, but as soon as I add any motion puppet movements to it, all the forward movement goes away.

Mark's Path Tutorial, using a robot is the one you want, then.

He might see your Thread & Post.

BTW - As I recall, one of the iClone User Manual Path's (PossiblyiC3) hasthe Character (Violet, I think), Walking Forward to the start of the Path.

The quickest & easiest Path Tutorial is in Walord's iC4 Begginer's Guide. But that's Project specific.

You could try Keyframing Edit Motion Layers along the Path.

There are differtent ways to kill a cat in iClone. You need to experiment.

Good luck:)

Anyone-else?  

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      REALLUSION FORUM ANNUAL PINHEAD COMMUNITY PROJECTS.

       New Pinhead Website & Project to be announced in September 2015

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The main problem with the transitions is that the feet are in different places/alignments from clip to clip. Often the avatar's root is in different places in relation to the avatar as well. This will always result in sliding/popping between clips.

I found, for the best path walking transitions, that I needed to make a walk ready pose. This puts the avatar in an optimized position to transition to or from walking. Basically, it keeps the feet aligned with the feet positions in the walk clip.

Here's how:
1 Load an avatar
2 Open motion puppet
3 Select Basic Walk
4 Set exaggeration and speed sliders to 0
5 Record a second or so
6 Open your Timeline
7 Collect motion for 10 frames or so, and save
8 Use this brief motion for all your starts and stops



You will need to do this twice really, one male, one female. Then, don't forget to mask when adding additional motions with motion puppet. You always want the feet to be as aligned as possible from clip to clip.

I'm not sure if I'm on the same page here but when I need to have a character walk from a to b I do the move first. Then with the Motion Puppet I mask out the legs, torso or whatever needs to retain the original animation then I pick a motion close to what I want and record it.

After that I go in manually and tweak with keyframes for distance and position to match what I'm looking for.

Its basically layering animations as the masking property of the Motion Puppet allows you to retain the walk cycle from the previous motion.

Edit: If you lock the legs with the mask in motion puppet they will not pop out of place from the previous motion as the legs will not move. This will work in most situations where the character is not walking.

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I LIVE to anymate, irritate and machinamate. Not necessarily in that order.

Warlord has a good method. That's how I do it too. Its the differences in stance width, primarily, that creates problems with the transitions between walking and standing. I got much better transitions when I did the "ready to walk" static motion because the stance width of the static motion and the walking motion was the same so the avatar's feet did not slide/pop wider to match the new stance. The sliding/popping is controlled by the blend overlap more/less. The puppet is often shifted left or right from its root for different motions as well. Aligning to one leg or the other can often help.

Another thing that I have done, and found to be helpful (at least it was back in version 4) is to re-cut the walk loops so that the looping point is mid-stride, when the feet are closest together. There is an extra frame or two that can come out as well if you edit CAREFULLY:blink: You may have noticed a slight glitch in the walk loop (this is rather subjective and anal on my part, I suppose :hehe:)

Excellent advice Rampa. Walk cycles can be problematic in any application. Also we need to keep in mind which foot is your anchor for exiting one clip and entering another. Was going to do a tute on this but Stuckon3D did one last year that explains it well as this little bit of help can go along way to eliminating the slide at the end of a motion clip.

V5 has the best walk cycle yet and we can only hope it keeps improving. I can remember when it was so bad it ruined many flicks for me as all I could focus on was the funky walk. Kinda like the shoulder roll in The Movies.

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I LIVE to anymate, irritate and machinamate. Not necessarily in that order.

I still use perform "walk" because you can break the motion in the timeline and adjust it endlessly. I also use the other methods. It depends on what I want to achieve.

With keyframing and masking for adding other movements, it's useful.

The avatars also follows/collide with the terrain and props added to the terrain.


http://www.youtube.com/user/elektron2kim?