Character Animation: The Fun Part - Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 - page 319

One of the great things about this method
is that it doesn't just work for walking.
Any kind of complex body motion can
be dealt with body first, feet later. Not
everyone chooses to deal with it that
way, but if you can make the upper body
look like it's moving naturally with no
legs present, you are almost guaranteed
to be able to fit the legs and feet in
afterward.

Before we continue, let's take a look
back at step 8 in the walk process. When
the foot strikes the ground at the end of
a stride in real life, it is usually oriented
in the direction that the person is intend-
ing to go next. It's like a little arrow of
intent. You should do the same thing
when placing the foot in 3D. Figure out
where the character is headed with their
next step, and make the foot point in that direction if possible.

Figure 11.33

I've followed this process through until the character's body stops moving beside the chair. You can see
the result in the Web Bucket video walked_a_hundred_miles.mpeg . The Dope Sheet is shown in Figure
11.34 .

It doesn't look very good, but it's only the feet. There are obviously some additional things that need to
go on to make it look right. If you watched that video carefully, you might have noticed that while the
first half of the footsteps followed the procedure we just detailed, the latter half, where he's walking side-
ways and backwards, doesn't follow the toe-down lift/heel-down placement. That's because people don't

Figure 11.34 The Dope Sheet with foot and heel keys for walking.