walking animation 3D stuff.

I always found it hard to animate a walk, given that I dont have any motion capture stuff.

then I found this.

http://www.developingwebs.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=DownloadsPlus&file=index&req=getit&lid=20

Its a font, but each letter is actually a human animation frame, so walking is key 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 .. there is running, walking, jumps, spins, flips. its all in there. very handy.

thats actually quite a good font and always helpful, thanks for sharing :)

Nice! Thanks, Yavin.

This might serve as a starting point for putting sequences together in BlitzMax:

Strict
AppTitle = "Swifty"

Const Chars = 94
DefData "`","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","0","-","="
DefData "~~","!","@","#","$","%","^","&","*","(",")","_","+"
DefData "q","w","e","r","t","y","u","i","o","p","[","]",""
DefData "Q","W","E","R","T","Y","U","I","O","P","{","}","|"
DefData "a","s","d","f","g","h","j","k","l",";","'"
DefData "z","x","c","v","b","n","m",",",".","/"
DefData "A","S","D","F","G","H","J","K","L",":","~q"
DefData "Z","X","C","V","B","N","M","<",">","?"

Local a$[Chars]
For Local n = 0 To Chars - 1
	ReadData a[n]
Next

Graphics 120,200
SetClsColor 255,255,255
SetColor 0,0,0
SetBlend ALPHABLEND

Local swifty:TImageFont = LoadImageFont("swifty.ttf", 180)
If Not swifty Then Notify "Swifty.ttf not found"; End

Repeat
	For Local n = 0 To Chars - 1
		Cls
		SetImageFont Null
		DrawText a[n],10,10
		SetImageFont swifty
		DrawText a[n],10,10
		Flip
		Delay 100
		If AppTerminate() Or KeyDown(KEY_ESCAPE) Then End
	Next
Forever

Compiled/Incbin-ed stand-alone Windows version: http://neonavis.com/swift.zip

I couldn't watch it yet but I assume it's only a sideview of the frames? What you actually need to do homebrew pseudo motion capturing is a sideview and a front view of the same scene (or a highly similar one). This way you'll align the bones first to the sideview frames and second to the front view, using the frames as background images of your animation tool. This should result in top quality quasi-motion-captured animation.

It may look silly, but it's easy to use a lowcost camera and record this by your own. </offtopic>

Correct:

I saw a cool little video sometime (sorry, I can't find it again) of how to make a character walk in 5 minutes.

1) Get the feet moving back and forth
2) Move the feet up and down
3) Move the body up and down
4) Swing the arms
5) Add little details to spice things up a bit (head bobble, shifting weight from side to side, etc.)

One thing I think works is to buy Poser. Poser 5 is about $10-$20 at Contentparadise.com (bad website, but...) and use the walk designer. Export out a movie, or a .bvh file, which you can use to animate a rig in a number of 3D programs.

Walkcycle done. You don't have jumping, so for that you might need to search for a bvh motion file, and view it with a bvh viewer.

well, bvh is a pretty unorganized thing IMHO. for example, there is no hierarchy, and no world center. So you have to correct the positions of the bones of each frame to make it walk on place.

I guess you have to fiddle a LOT until a downloaded bvh file works and looks nice. And note: every tool that exports bvh may use its own special implementation of it.

Personally I'd find it much easier to scale the frames of some videos and then align the bones manually in something like pacemaker, fragmotion or CFX. It definitely wouldn't take longer than manually animating something right from my memory.

Unless you use XSI, and then you simply build a skeleton from the bvh information automatically. I know what you're saying... and I've had similar issues with fbx as well. The point is though, something like Poser will help anyone build a decent walk cycle without too much difficulty.