The Structured Method of 3D Animation: HUMAN RUN CYCLE

Here’s the rig we’ll be using in this course.

If you already have animation experience and feel comfortable with another humanoid rig built in a similar way, you’re welcome to use that instead—it should work just fine for the lessons.

Let's reference the rig into a new scene. Referencing is a way of opening a rig in a more production-friendly way. It also makes sure that we do not accidentally break the rig.

In this step, we’ll hide unnecessary parts of the rig so they don’t interfere with our animation process. We’ll also refine the character’s proportions—focusing mainly on the musculature—to achieve the desired look and feel.

Set up a layout with the necessary panels appropriate for character animation in Maya, hide unnecessary rig parts,  set up the playback and frame rate settings, and initialize the rig by placing a key frame at the first frame of the timeline.

Let’s practice a consistent method for saving different stages of our animation. This way, if we ever need to go back and make changes, we can easily return to an earlier version without starting over from scratch.

Studio Library is a wonderful, free software available online that is suited for saving poses, selection sets, and manipulating them to meet our needs.

We need this tool to help, particularly with making mirrored poses for our run cycle.

A Mirror Table is a file we’ll generate for use in the Studio Library tool. This file tells the software how to create mirrored poses—that is, how to flip a pose from one side to the other. We’ll actually apply it in a later video, but for now, our task is simply to generate the Mirror Table file and set it aside.

The Primary Running Pose is the main pose that starts the entire process in motion.

The Contact Right pose is the same as the Primary Running Pose, so this one is already complete. However, we’ll still need to place it at both ends of the run cycle.

The Contact Left pose is the mirror image of the Contact Right pose. We will use the Studio Library tool to create this pose for us in just a button push.

Lets view the current state of the motion, rough as it may be, with just the three Extreme poses.

The timing of the run cycle is the time (in frames) it takes for the entire cycle to happen within. If the cyborg character runs slowly, the number of frames is more. If he runs faster, the number of frames is less. We will use a timer to help us determine the magic number of frames for our humanoid character to get the timing of the run just right.

Stride length is the space between each footfall. Even though we are animating the run cycle in-place (ie, the humanoid is actually treadmilling, and not really moving forward), there is an easy way to determine this accurately.

Now we set all the controllers of the humanoid cyborg rig such that the curves that are generated by the animation loops perfectly. This makes sure that there is no hitch at the end of the cycle, and it also makes sure that the animation can play endlessly on the timeline.

Always. Keep. Improving.

Lets view the current state of the motion.

Let's study how I have set up the timing of the run cycle.

The Down pose is where the cyborg has placed its weight fully on its feet, and therefore, the hip has come down the most. There are two such poses – one for each foot.

The Up pose is where the cyborg has pushed itself forward with the leg muscles. This is the pose that generates the power for the run cycle. There are two such poses – one for each foot.

The Flight pose is the moment the character is fully lifted from the ground, as if he is flying forward. This is therefore the highest point in the Y curve for the hip.

Let’s take a look at the current state of the animation to see how the motion is coming together.

Now that the poses have all been created, its time to work on the various axes (X, Y, Z) of the hip controller to create a sense of mass to the humanoid cyborg. We do this by very carefully pitching, thrusting, and shifting the hip of the humanoid cyborg at strategic points.

Thrusts: When the humanoid cyborg pushes it forward and upward using the Up poses, it causes a momentary acceleration in the motion of the character relative to its normal speed. There is also a momentary reduction in speed when the humanoid cyborg is in his down poses. This variance shows up as an interesting curve in the Z axis of the hip. This is what we aim to articulate.

Now we need to show the lateral shifting of the character as he plants his foot down and the weight is fully absorbed by the legs. This happens in the down poses. Again, this motion results in an interesting curve in the X axis.

And now, let's view the current state of the motion.