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How do characters move ? (when there's animation)

Hey guys ,
I was wondering , when you have a character armed with
a walking animation , wont it just play the animation while standing on the spot , so it looks like Michael's Moonwalk ? How does a character move when a walking/running animation is added to it ? What changes in the code , and what doesnt . And if you can , please tell of any sites that provide free skeletons / animations for use with your models .
Thanks

Well, there's no direct and easy way to calculate walking speeds, it's trial and error - but in DBPro your command could be as simple as:

MOVE OBJECT Obj,spd#

Spd# being the speed your character shall walk - I'd look into a more mathematical method, but for messing that's an ideal command to start with.

Just have the camera follow your character, rotate him a little each time and move him forward, experiment with different speeds and you should have him walking in a circle quite realistically.

Personally, I would practice animation a lot rather than trying to follow too many tutorials. Borrow a camera and film someone walking then try to replicate that - adding a little exageration to their limbs, it's actually quite easy if you can break it into a dozen or so reference images, which you'd try to replicate as keyframes in your animation package. There are some techniques that can be followed, like little systems that can help, but I find trying to be too regimented leads to overly exagerated movements, really a normal walk is very subtle and quite difficult to replicate. Having an assistant might be a good idea, like someone who's happy to let you study their movements and film them - it's like they get to be the star in the game, should'nt be too tricky to find a volunteer.


Van-B

#VanB : 0k , you talked about walking speeds , but im talking about animations (when you see the character doing the walking animation) would u see him just moving his legs on the spot in dbp ? so would I have to add (move object) command to it or what ? Im currently practicing on anim8or , and also if you have any links to sites that have free animations that can be added to your models .

Yeah, you need to move object while the animation is looping, this is really the only way to do it.

I'm unaware of any tutorial sites or resource sites off-hand, but the thing is, you can't just add an animation that someone else has done, each unique model needs it's own animations. With character FX, you could re-rig a different mesh, but this is only effective with models that are about the same proportions - it's damn fidly but it can be done. There's also a package that lets you apply a preset animation to a mesh, it's not editable though, so you'd be stuck with whatever animations were provided. Might suit you though - it's mentioned in one of the newsletters, sorry I can't recall it's name (animation shop or something along those lines).


Van-B

Isnt there some kind of format for these skeletons that make you add them to your model in a modeller like anim8or or something ?

Character Shop is probaly the easiest. Just load your model, rig it to the skeleton, and animate away. The Advanced Animation Plugin will also do it, but it's much harder.

Like Van B said, object animation is independent of object placement. So, you can be looping walking and moving, or looping idle animation and standing still. Whatever.