Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
You may want to add a slight twist to the feet as they come forward. Do this by
placing keys on the Z rotation of the feet.
You can also adjust the knee positions, pointing her knees inward as she walks.
Play through the lower body animation a few times, and maybe even generate a playblast
to see how it runs in real time. Once you are completely happy with it, we will continue on
to the torso.
Torso Animation
The animation in Kila's legs and hips will guide the movement of the rest of her body. To
add movement to her torso, we only need to animate the main spine controls.
To make sure we have complete control over the animation, we will animate one attribute
at a time, but to speed things up we can animate all three spine joints together, giving her
back a smooth, gradual arc as it moves.
We will begin with the Rotate Y attribute, making her torso twist slightly with each step.
As you walk, your upper body tends to mirror the lower body's actions. That is, when your
right leg is out in front, it's the left arm that is in front. As the arm moves to the front, the
torso twists, bringing the related shoulder out with the arm. This is the movement we will
now add into Kila.
1.
Select all three spine controls. At frame 0, neither leg is out in front, so we will
keep the torso's rotations at 0. This is the crossover point in the animation.
Set a key on the Y rotation on frames 0 and 32 on all spine controls. These frames
need to hold the same pose.
2.
Move along the Time Slider until the right leg is as far forward as it can go; this
should happen on frame 8.
Using just the Y rotation, twist the torso so that the left shoulder moves forward.
Inputting a value of
-2
directly into the Channel Box will affect all three spine
controls and should be sufficient; we don't want the torso movement to be too dra-
matic. Set a key when you're finished with the rotation.
3.
Move along until the left leg is all the way forward; this should be on frame 24. Set
a value of
2
in the Rotate Y attribute, and set another key.
