For my walk cycle I chose to use the 3D Bonnie model to test out animation in Maya. I knew I had to start off with the feet placement and work off of that. For the first key frame I had Bonnie mid walk; one foot lifted, about to take a step. Once I had figured out the placement I changed the foot tilt and bend to add detail in the foot movement and look less stiff. To make sure I equaled out my frames I duplicated my first frame and had it on the 24 frames (1 second) meaning I had one full walk every second. I then flipped this pose for my middle key frame (frame 12) so that the timing was correct.
After this I moved onto the arm placement, having the arm opposite the frontward leg raised, leaving the other arm slightly bent behind. I repeated the steps I took with the legs, duplicating them for my 3 key frames before i moved onto my next couple of key frames.
Although the placement was correct I still needed to add in a couple more key frames in order to make the walk look smooth. The first thing I had to change was the feet, by putting in a key frame just after the foot made contact with the ground, I levelled out the foot raise so that the shoe was flat on the floor. For the opposite foot I brought it up more to make the arc motion more drastic. Another thing I changed for this key frame was the swinging arm motion. as it didn't look right to me. I straightened out the arms more as it starts to swing back and brought it away from the body slightly. After doing this i went back and changed the hand position so that when the hand is infront of the body, it's brought slightly into the middle and rotated inwards. This creates a nice swinging action and brings in a bit of attitude into the walk. I then continued to duplicate these key frames throughout.
Once I had a good motion for the arms and legs I gave the body a bouncing motion when Bonnie stepped forwards by lifting her up slightly every time her leg was risen. Unfortunately this isn't as drastic as I would have liked in the final animation which is something I hope to fix. I also added minor movements aswell in these key frames such as slight hair and shirt movements.
Although this walk cycle didn't come out as smooth as I would have liked, I am very happy with how my first attempt at animating and human model turned out and plan to adapt and improve on it later on.
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