Original subtitles

- In this video,

we will start planning our animation.

Starting by polishing the up and down of the torso root.

And then the feet motion.

The first obvious step is to go into pause mode

into our rig.

Select all our keys,

press the T key and switch to busy interpolation.

You can switch between the action editor

and the graph editor by pressing control tab

and we to make sure all the curves are exposed

by clicking on the show hidden option.

You may also press Alt + H to make sure

that there is no curves that is manually hidden.

From there,

I will press eight to select all the curve

and then press Shift + E and choose make cyclic.

Now all of our curve get this modifier

and our whole animation will be cycling in time infinitely.

I often start polishing my animation with the feet

and go back and forth with the torso.

In this case,

we will start by polishing the Z location

of the torsal roots.

This is the most important channel during a run cycle.

The up and down motion.

If we know playing our animation,

we are no longer in step mode

and while there are some glitches,

it doesn't look that bad.

Here is our current Z curve

and here is what we are going to do with it.

The idea is to bring contrast to our up and down

or a heavy character you will, favorize the down pose

for a light energized character like ours,

You will favorize the up pose meaning that

we will hold our character in the air little bit.

The idea is to bring contrast to the motion.

So we will, I have a slight plateau in the top position

and then a fast down pose with a fast bounce,

meaning that the curve will rapidly get back

to its up position.

You really have to focus on

the up and down motion of your character

and if needed you can hide the legs and the arms.

Since our character is bouncing twice during

the 24 frame of its cycle,

I have refined the keys from zero to 12

and then duplicated those keys from zero to 12

onto 12 to 24.

Then I can trade off any keys

that were remaining previously.

This way the base up and down motion of my root is done

and I can switch to the feet motion

as explained many times animation is not a linear workflow.

So we will probably have to get back to the root motion

and switch between route and feet, root and torso,

et cetera.

This up and down motion is mostly put upon a feeling,

but I've shaped it so that my character

is holding a bit in here.

And the speed at which he's going down and going up

is not exactly the same.

When you are doing a jump or an eye blink,

it's always good to have contrast between

the up motion and the down motion,

even if it's just about one frame.

When I polish the feet whether it's for a cycle.

or for another animation,

I always start with the location,

or I often polish the feet pretty early on

because a lot of the torso motion,

the hips motion is based on the feet motion.

The first thing I want to define

is the contacting in position of the feet.

To get a nice looking and dynamic whole run cycle

it's good to have a straight leg during the contact.

So as mentioned produced in this case

my character is a bit too far from the ground

to get a good pose

so I can switch back to the root control

and offset to the whole as Z curve down.

As I define my contact pose,

it's important to also define the moment

the feet will leave the ground.

And as you may remember,

in the previous cycle we have created

the interpolation of the foot while

it's on the ground should be linear

because the ones on the ground,

the feet will travel at a constant speed.

I can convert the keys on frame two and frame five

by selecting them and pressing the V key

and switching to vector.

Then we can delete any key between frame two and frame five.

We'll have to do these

for all the location curves Z Y and X .

For the time being we are focusing on Z and Y .

Once done both curve between frame two and five

are linear making a straight line.

This is the kind of obvious moment

While the polishing feet.

From there I will then focus on getting a good feeling

for the rest of the motion.

As the foot leaves the ground it still have momentum

from the moment it was traveling on the ground.

This is why I like to push it back.

I want to favorise the backward and forward position

and have a quick motion during the passing pose.

The passing pose doesn't read as well as the up pose

and the pushing pose.

Covering the airborne poses of our character,

his run will feel more agile and light.

While in the end,

I have a tight spacing around frame 12 and frame zero,

as the feet ease or slow down into the extreme pose.

And then I will accelerate during the passing poses.

Another thing I like to do is to have a great acceleration

just before the contact pose.

So that we can feel that the foot is smashing on the ground

and then pushing backward.

And we can see this acceleration between frame zero

and frame two,

where our curve gets more and more vertical.

As usual, here you can see the final polished curve

of the Y and Z location of the feet.

Try to match the motion path you can see on this one screen

you can pause the video there.

Next step is polishing the forward rotation of the foot.

To do so As explained during debulking,

I always have arrived using the foot roll controller.

I will make sure that I have a nice heel contact

on frame two

and that I have at least one frame with a flat foot.

Rotation of this controller must be set to zero

around frame foot.

Might not be the case if you should use printer references,

where on there are mostly contacting with the bowl

of their foot.

As they are constantly accelerating forward.

But for a constant speed run cycle,

it's better to contact with the heel.

It will look better,

you will have more contrast into to your motion

and the idea is to transition smoothly

from the heel to the toe.

So that the character keeps momentum.

As I'm reworking the heel position,

the leg is less straight during the pushing pose.

So I can slightly offset the wheel location curve

of the foot and then get back onto my heel controller.

Again, we are not into a linear work workflow,

and we need to go back and forth

to the different controllers

who hit better poses.

Now, I will get back to to the torso route controller

and select all the keys of the wide location

and move them down to push the whole body

of my character forward

and get a more dynamic pose.

From there I will select again my foot controller

and move it's Y curves slightly down

on the contact pose and on the pushing pose.

So we are always refining the position of our character.

Now I can get back to work onto the heel

and make sure I have a nice roll of foot.

Here you can see again,

the curve has a reference

and use it to Polish your own curve,

but you may focus on your own run cycle

because this specific curve match my specific animation

and if you have differences regarding your feet position

or the eighth of the torso controller,

you will have variation.

They are used to make the tip

of the foot slightly pointing backward and down

during the passing pose to get this nice dragging motion

and transition into having the heel down

while the foot is about to hit the ground.

Next, we will polish the toe controllers.

This animation,

I've only used the main toe controller

since the big toe controller move along with it

that's perfectly fine.

This part of the animation is pretty straight forward.

First of all,

we will only be animating using the X Euler rotation curve

is to create a nice follow through animation

of the toes, dragging something similar

to what we did with the tail of the squirrel character.

It's important to console the rotation while the foot

is on the ground so that the toes won't click

with the ground.

This is why the keys on frame four and five

are switched to vector.

One interesting subtlety I've done,

delay by one frame the moment the toes get flat

on the ground.

The foot gets flattened on frame three

and the toes follow through on frame four.

When the foot leaves the ground,

the toes are pointing toward the previous pose,

when the foot is moving forward to toes

are slightly pointing backward.

One thing you can use to help yourself is the motion path

of the foot we have on screen.

The toes should be pointing to what the previous frame

during the cycle.

These in most cases, will bend them way too much,

but then you just have to adjust their curvature

so that the foot have a nice and natural pose.

Here is the final curve of the X rotation

of the toe controller.

As usual, you can pause the video there

to compare this curve with your

and again, this is the curve of my animation.

Yours might be a bit different.

We've been mostly working on the foot from the side view.

Its time to revise it from the front view

with the X location curve

by selecting back the foot controller, hidden all the keys,

but the X location.

And we will mark on the side to side motion.

Remember what I told you regarding the location

of the foot when hitting the ground.

Linear interpolation,

and regarding the side to side motion,

we need a flat curve,

meaning that the foot will move on to a straight line.

To do so,

I will convert keys on frame two and five to vector

and get rid of any keys in between.

While I was originally planning to make the foot push inward

when leaving the ground

and then during the passing pose getting on the outside,

decided during this polishing stage to do the inverse,

as I told you before this motion can vary

from people to people depending on anatomic attribute,

but also the skill to run from this person.

Since my character is agile and skilled,

it might be better to kind of follow

the motion of an athlete.

In this case,

the foot is getting outside while getting off the ground

inside during the passing pose,

a bit outside during the up pose

and finally hit it's contacting pose.

You should keep the side to side motion pretty subtle.

If the motion is too contrasted,

the run will look a bit sloppy as if your character

was lacking of control.

So beyond the motion here,

we are defining the character,

we are defining the finding who he is and how skilled he is.

And this is what makes the difference

between motion and animation.

As you roll,

here is the final X location curve on the foot controller.

Once you're done with this,

you can call the foot splining and polishing done

or you can stay with me for a couple of extra minutes

where we will add some extra super subtle rotation

to the foot to bring its motion to the next level.

To do so I will use first

the Y quaternion rotation of foot.

I don't want it to rotate while on the ground.

So as usual,

I will create a flat curve bound by two vector handles.

We will use the Y rotation curve to slightly twist

the foot toward another target.

Check the orientation of the center,

while I'm rotating the foot

during this polition state,

I am pushing it inward while the foot is leaving the ground

and during the passing pose,

and then I'm slightly pushing it on the outside

while the foot is about to contact the ground.

Since the foot is using quaternions,

we need to play on both the Y and Z rotation curve

to properly orientate the foot.

Just scrub through this reference video,

focusing on the orientation of the foot,

we'll find a link to the YouTube video

in the documentation as usual.

You have the final shape of the Z

and Y quaternion rotation curve of the foot controller.

From there,

there is another thing we need to fix.

It's the pull target of the knee.

Here again,

we could work a lot on the left to right motion of the knee,

which is super subtle during the run cycle but still exists.

Since our character is pretty light on his feet,

I will just try to keep the knees align with the run.

So I'm just going frame to frame

and adjusting the X location of the pull controller,

so that it looks a little cleaner.

Having the knees almost align with the feet and the hips

will look better and more dynamical.

The intimate detail before we mirror on the motion

on to the other foot,

is the bank or side to side rotation of the foot.

From a front view when the foot hit the ground,

it's not perfectly flat.

When the foot hit the ground,

it's generally slightly rotated toward its outer edge,

and it will roll onto the thumb while pushing backwards,

this is not a big deal,

but this is the kind of detail

that will make your run cycle look a little better.

From there,

we can mirror the animation onto the other legs controller.

First, we need to select all the right click controller.

we've just polished.

Then in the graph editor press Alt + H

to make sure you don't have any hidden curve.

From there press eight to select all the curve

and then Ctrl + C to copy those curve.

Then we can select all the controllers on the left leg.

And from there in the graph editor, press Alt + H

to make sure you don't have any hidden curve.

Now select all the keys but the one on frame zero

from there, make sure that the play head is on frame zero

and press Ctrl + Shift + V to paste the mirrored curves.

Now we have this fun animation,

where both leg do the same motion

and we need to offset it.

To do so, in the graph, editor press Shift + D

to duplicate all the frames.

Don't press enter, then press the X and 24.

This will move those newly created frame by 24 frame

on the right.

If we now move those keys in time left to right

while playing the animation,

we can see that we are currently offsetting the motion.

So if I press G X minus 12,

now the left leg motion is offset by 12 frames.

So of the length of the cycle with the right leg

and our cycle is done.

To make this clean,

I will go on frame zero, press I an insert,

and key frame on all channels,

select all the keys on frames zero, press V

and switch them to free.

Then they will duplicate them

with Shift and D and move them on frame 24.

We can now delete any keys after frame 24

and before frame zero

and both our leg now cycling and are polished.