ALWAYS from the pelvis or root control, i only ever use the global controller to initially place the character in the shot.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

I don't do a hell of a lot of full figure character animation these days but I would say that for most situations I would be trying to animate
each step, moving the pelvis forward. Usually a character needs to be doing something interesting as he goes, so doing a cycle
that loops and moving the main control forward isnt going to cut it. That said it can be a time saver in certain situations. Say if a character is running along a flat road it could make sense to make an on the spot loop and move the main control forward with a linear curve for that part of the shot. but if he needs to step, jump, spin or otherwise negotiate the terrain it would be a matter of keyframing all the poses.

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Yeh that's pretty much what I thought. I haven't done a great deal of it either and I'm still trying to figure out a method that's both efficient and effective. It's all a bit of a dogs breakfast at the moment.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

if you have never seen keith langos blog/ website you should check it out. at the very least this page [Link to www.keithlango.com] will tell you a very solid animation walkthrough used by a lot of very well known animators.

basically he begins animating characters in stepped curves mode and then moves to linear and then finally to splined animation curves. read it and you'll understand.

i highly recommend this method

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

Thanks Matt, that looks like some good reading. I generally do start with stepped curves for the various poses, it's after that that things start getting messy. Hopefully this helps.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

Thats a great article, I'll give it read. I got this gnomon dvd on the subject

[Link to www.thegnomonworkshop.com]

Its really good, pretty much the same idea, pose to pose, stepped curves then smooth it all out in passes.

personally I prefer to work with flat tangents, sometimes basing a breakdown pose on the interpolated values.

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if you guys are interested here are a couple of other workflows i've heard of:

copied pairs method: i'm not overly familiar with this way of working but it involves setting a pose and then copying the key for that pose several frames down the timeline and then setting the next pose. i think the idea here is not to worry about changing tangents too much but to create held poses and then break those poses down with more keys. like i said i'm not really familiar with this method.

layering method: this method involves hiding the limbs and animating the body first and then moving outward and animating the legs arm and head and finally the face.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

What do you use?

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

a bit of a mix of pose to pose and the above two methods, i'm a bit all over the place to be honest.

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and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.

That's strangely comforting

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]