Digital Tutors - Creating Walk Cycles in Maya

Year: 2010

Total time: 02:50:00

What you will learn

In this Maya tutorial we will cover the process of creating a Walk Cycle in Maya. One step at a time, we'll break down the body mechanics of a walk.

We'll learn the main positions that one goes through in a walk, we'll learn how to create seamless cycles and explore ways we can add convincing follow-through and weight. We'll even work with animation layers to produce a walk that is natural and has a little personality.

1. Introduction and Project Overview

2. Setting up the scene

3. Beginning the Walk Cycle

4. Finishing the Contact Positions

5. Adding the Down Position

6. Completing the extremes of the walk

7. Refining the upper body and feet

8. Balancing the character in the front view

9. Animating the subtle rotations of the feet

10. Animating a toe flap for fluidity

11. Adding weight to the hips

12. Animating the rotations of the upper body

13. Working on the chest

14. Animating the head

15. Correcting the motion of the upper arm

16. Wrapping up the movement of the upper arms

17. The Follow-through and Overlapping Action of the elbows

18. Adding Follow-through to the wrists

19. Finalizing the wrists

20. Refining shoulder movement

21. Finalizing the Walk Cycle

22. Translating a Walk Cycle Forward

23. Utilizing Animation Layers to add more life to the Walk Cycle

24. Smoothing the character via a Custom Attribute