Original subtitles

- Start polishing the torso of our character.

As usual, I will start with the torso route controller.

This is something we have been doing

on all the previous lessons,

whether it was the robot or the squirrel character

or the run cycle on this character.

What I want to point out here is that the motion of the

torso root is one of the most important parts

of your character.

Define the center of gravity motion of your character.

Hence it will define the weight and rhythm

of your walk cycle,

which is the most important notion in body mechanic.

Start with the up and down motion, or Z location curve,

which is the most important on the walk cycle.

Right now, the curve looks very (indistinct)

and very smooth

but it seems that the extreme are

pretty well positioned in time.

Goal will be to bring contrast to the motion by holding

a bit the down pose and the up pose.

We will have a slight plateau on the highest and the lowest

values of the curve.

On the extreme up,

I'm trying to have the leg almost fully extended.

Here I'm comparing the previous pose with the new one.

During the pushing or up pose,

I'm trying to get an almost straight leg.

This give a better shape to the leg

and a better line of action to it.

We will talk about line or action in detail

in the next chapter.

To make it simple here, it makes the silhouette

of our character more readable.

As the straight leg supports the idea of verticality,

of pushing up.

So I've polished the first half of the motion,

I will first duplicate the extreme down on frame four

and move it by 16 frame of the length of the cycle,

get rid of all the key frame after frame 20.

And they will duplicate the polished portion of the curve

from frame four to frame 20 and move it by 16 frames.

There I can select the key on frame 32,

if you don't have one and you can insert a key frame there

and move it on frame zero.

You treat of any keys that goes beyond our 32 frame rail.

If needed, don't forget to rotate

to beat the keys on frame zero and 32 to align the curve

from one cycle to the other.

Where you are polishing a specific feature or area

of your character,

don't hesitate to hide the other part.

So I will add that to the visibility properties panel

and I will hide arms

and hide the arms (indistinct) controllers.

I do so I remove visual noise

and I feel like the up and down motion

while it's properly timed is a bit too strong.

To make sure I'm using the bounding box

as a pivot point so that I can scale the whole curve

on an average.

I will simply scale the whole curve on the Y axis

by pressing S and then Y.

You can also move the whole curve along the Y axis

in the (indistinct) to either raise or lower

the center of gravity of your character.

I want my character to almost have a straight leg

whenever he is pushing so that it feels lightweight.

With the up and down motion now polished,

I will jump to the side to side motion,

working on the explication.

We'll add the Z location and display the X location curve.

It currently looks a bit messy.

We are going to fix it pretty quickly.

First thing we need to do is identify the extremes.

Weight mainly shift between the contact pose

and the passing pose.

Then the body is to decide during the pushing pose,

before the body starts falling on the other side

and accelerate,

shifting the weight onto the other leg.

To the polished curve,

when zero we have the contact pose,

and we are almost reached the extreme

on frame six in the curve

is until frame 11,

where we start pushing.

Frame 11 to frame 15,

we slowly shift the weight onto the other side

until the contact pose where we will have

a fast change in direction.

So you really want to shift the weight from side to side

during the fall,

whenever the leg is about to contact the ground

and contact the ground.

And as the character recover with this contacting leg

and start pushing on it,

it will first absorb the momentum

and then start pushing on the other side.

As usual, you can refer to the current curve on this plane,

but if you want to properly learn,

mostly focus on what we've just explained

first motion during the fall,

and then easing from the transition.

I was getting close to a convincing result

I want to be able to properly symmetrize the motion.

Note that this is not mandatory.

If you have a difference between the left to right motion,

it can be interesting

as a real life walk cycle is never perfect,

but I just want to show you how

to mirror the curve over time.

I will get rid of any curves that goes beyond

half of the cycle.

After frame 16, we select all the other keys,

duplicate them and move them by 16 frame on the X axis.

Now, my side to side motion repeat over 16 frame,

but always go onto the same side.

You need to symmetrize the value of our curve along

the Y axis and around the value zero,

we can easily do this by using the 2D cursor.

It is defined by the play at position

for the X value

and this horizontal blue line for the Y value.

Since we want to symmetrize our curve around the value zero,

we need to reposition our 2D cursor

horizontal value to zero.

Precisely set this value by adding to the view tab

where we can see the play at position

named cursor X value and the Y value.

So I would replace the current Y value by zero.

Now, I just have to make sure that I'm using

the 2D cursor as a pivot point,

scale on the Y axis by minus one,

the keys from frame 16 to frame 32.

This way, we make sure that our cycle is currently cycling.

And then I will clean a bit the curve,

removing the keys that talk too close one to the other,

and doesn't bring any information.

From there, we can work on the Y location axis

of our torso.

Polishing the Y curve is going to be pretty simple

because it has a very subtle influence onto our walk cycle.

If you don't want to play with this curve,

that's fine,

but you should always input a bit of motion.

By that is that since we are animating our walk cycle

on the spot,

the torso route forward and backward wise

should it be on the spot too.

There is always a bit of variation of our time

while your whole body is moving in a linear fashion,

the are variation for every single point

in the body of your character.

Thing to know is that as the character is falling forward,

just before the contact pose,

the body is accelerating forward.

And as soon as the foot is hitting the ground,

the body will slow down and move backward.

Double check the values of my curve.

You can see that the range of motion is very, very subtle.

It just brings some extra texture to the motion.

Our torso root is now polished.

And in the next video,

we are going to polish the other features of the torso.