Correct step size

Support Animation related help
1

I’m trying to animate a walk of a character from A to B. If the distance from A to B is not an integer number of normal steps of the character, how would I proceed?

  1. Do regular steps and adjust the final one to a shorter or larger one?
  2. Do custom length steps to fit the length to an integer number of steps from A to B?

Whats the better way? How do you usually do?

I’d love to hear all the opinions possible here.
Thanks.
-G

2

Hi Genete,

I think that option 1 is probably the most natural. You have to go from movement to a standing pose anyway. Option 2 actually splits in two whether you want or need to change the stride (step size) in the walk cycle or not. Option 2 can be quicker to animate if the remaining step is small compared the distance travelled, i.e. the number of steps. In this case you do not have to reduce the stride, you simply change the forward speed a little. If the remainder is too big, increasing the speed introduces “sliding feet”, and you do have to change the stride, which is extra work. In my stickman animation, I chose to adjust both the speed and the time to solve this, but that is obviously just the easy way out. :unamused:

G.