Advanced footwork

We knew there was more to animating the feet than making them scoot forward – now comes the part where we make them really walk! A lot of animators run into trouble in this part, but by breaking the process down into logical steps as we’ve been doing, we can make things much less complicated.

We’ll begin by animating the left foot over the whole period, from frame 0 to 24. Then, everything the left foot does, the right foot can do 12 frames later (or earlier). Since we’ve already keyed the Y Location F-curves of both feet, the trickiest part is taken care of.

Important note

Nearly all of the work in this section can (and should) be performed in orthographic side-view in the 3D Viewport. Numerical precision is no longer needed, but pay close attention to how posing the foot affects the knee.

Rolling the foot

For the first half of our walk cycle, the left foot stays in contact with the ground, but that doesn’t mean it...