How to Create the Perfect Walk Cycle Animation Easily?

A very simple looped walk process will usually end up being around 10 frames long, with five frames between each crossover. Crossovers are the points where one leg overtakes the other.

The arms move in tandem, left over right, and right over left. The left leg and the left arm should never be swung forward and back in sync with one another. Rotating in this way adds pull and graphic variety to the walk cycle.

These crossovers will usually coincide with individual contact topics. But what is a contact topic in animation?

What Is a Walk Cycle?

A walk process is a sequence of animations that loops infinitely to create the illusion of a character taking action. Walk cycles are something that every animator must understand because they are used in everything from video games to commercials to movies.

Making believable walk cycles can be a tough thing to do while keeping high quality, but accomplishing so is of the utmost priority if your audience is going to find the walking motion believable.

Follow these 12 steps to understand how to animate a walk cycle realistically.

Step 1- Find a Video of a Walk Cycle Reference

Video reference is every animator’s best tool. Before beginning your walk cycle, you need to learn how the human body moves during a walk. How do the hips rotate? Where is the importance centered? How many frames does it take per phase? These are the kinds of queries you should be answering while you study your reference.

Even though there are numerous video references online, it enables you to create your own video reference of yourself so you can feel the motions your body makes as you walk.

Step 2- Create the Contact Position

The first of the four main functions in a walk that you must block in is the contact position, which is the basis for your animation.

The contact part is the beginning and end of each stage and forms the stage for how your walk is going to be examined. This is the moment when the front portion is at full wing with its feet starting to contact the ground. The back leg is also in touch with the ground, but the back foot’s heel is rising. Don’t hyperextend the leg or have it flawlessly straight. Instead, keep a slight bend to stop some of the popping in the knees. The weight of the body is split between individual legs. Make sure the character is grounded by animating ground procedures.

Step 3- Make the Down Position

The second main position in a walk cycle is the down part, which is where the full weight of your character moves down and shifts to the contacting foot. Since this is the lower part of the walk, you can display the weight of the character by how far their hips drop. Make sure not to overdo it. You don’t like your character to bob up and down too much, so save the body up high. The back leg is partially locked by the front leg.

Step 4- Make the Passing Position

The following pose you’ll make is the passing part (or halfway pose). This is used when one of your character’s legs parts with the other.

Because of this, the weight of your character will begin to go up as you pass the place. To save it from looking off balance, the weight of your character needs to be over the supporting foot. At this moment in the walk, the back foot is off the ground but still pointed backward, putting your character midway through the stride position. In other words, this pose is the exact same as the first position, but the legs are reversed.

Step 5- Making the Up Position

The up position (or, the falling point of the walk) is the final of the four main positions you must know when understanding how to animate a walk cycle. The character is now at the highest point of the walk, so the leg is moving forward as it prepares to put the foot on the ground.

The character’s weight should be bent forward and the heel of the back foot should be off the ground, so it should be rotated up.

After your character has this place locked in, you should repeat the four main parts for the opposing leg. Once both sides are blocked in, you can simply cycle the animation before beginning to refine it.

Step 6- Refine the Up-and-Down Weight

The weight of your character is something you like to get accurate. For the right weight, adjust the up and down parameters (usually the Translate Y) for the root command.

Think of your character’s hips as a hop, jumping up and down. Use this visualization to assist you in adjusting the angles to get something equal to a bouncing ball. You may see how this affects the legs, but don’t worry about that yet. With most animation, you’ll like to refine the image from the root control down. This is because any modifications you make to the root will affect the legs, so you should make sure everything up in the hierarchy looks good before fixing the legs.

Step 7- Refine the Side-to-Side Weight

After you get the up-and-down motion looking and feeling accurate, it’s time to refine the side-to-side motion (usually the Translate X). Make sure the spacing is correct by adjusting the angles in your graph editor. In most cases, there is no requirement to add extra keys at this moment, as you can usually get it to glance believable by just manipulating the tangent handles.

A useful rule of thumb to go by is to have the hips presently above the cultivated foot. This provides your character with a feeling of balance when their weight is shifted from side to side.

Step 8- Refine the Chest Movement

Since the upper body of the character can add so much vitality and demand to your walk, it’s essential to refine the chest movement.

If your character has a big, wide chest spins, it can provide the character with a bit of a mood. If that’s what you’re going for, use this to your benefit. If that’s not what you like, keep the chest swirls relatively simple to improve their believability.

Remember, if the arms are pushing, so is the chest. No one walks with a completely still chest.

Step 9- Add Drag and Lead, and Follow to the Arms

Once the chest is refined and inspected well, it’s the moment to go in and change the components. This is the point where you can begin to count the nice information and follow and pull in the arm joints. For instance, think of the arms as a chain of action that mimics the chest. The shoulders move first, followed by the upper arm, the elbow, and finally the wrist.

Have fun with this and experiment with the amount of overlapping and dragging that you integrate into the animation.

Step 10- Configure Any Knee Popping

After all the positions on the upper body are done, it’s time to concentrate your attention on settling any problems with the legs. Usually, this implies addressing the pops in the knees because they will probably be happening at this point. This problem is easy to fix, and you have a couple of opportunities for doing it, depending on your particular project.

Take advantage of the leg stretch power that may be available on your rig. Try to shrink or pull the leg a little to get rid of the popping. Don’t overdo it, though! This should be used sparingly.

Adjust the hip balance to stop any popping. The amount of tweaking required should be the tiniest if you kept a little bend in the knee when you made the contact position.

Step 11- Flap the Feet

A wonderful way to sell the weight of the character is to have the feet hit firmly on the ground. The feet should go from an extended position to flat within one or two shelves. Ease out of the first pose, and grow into the next. You can even increase the toe to add a bit of drag during the ease-out pose.

Step 12- Polish Your Walk

The last phase in learning how to animate a walk cycle is to push the walk to the next level.

Add sufficient elements in between the main parts to improve the animation.

Track all the angles of the feet and hands.

Drag the head and fingers a little.

Alter any parts of the walk cycle to develop a personality.

Guide back to your video connection to find items that you think will help the animation and add that final 10% of the walk cycle.

Wrapping the items

Developing a human walk cycle is a bit hard but attainable by following this process. Once you have gotten the hang of it, you are more likely to do some alterations yourself to brush it up and add importance to your animation.

Keep completing this procedure and you will master it or you can contact us on PerfectionGeeks Technologies.