Probably my biggest challenge yet. I really love doing walk and run cycles, and there is definitely something else about doing it on quadrupeds. But after learning about the amount of blending of animations there is in video games, I thought I'd give it a go. How hard could it be?? (it was really hard.)
One thing I love with quadrupeds (not including unguligrades) is toe spread. When I would watch videos of lions and tiger walking - their paws look so soft and fluffy. The toes often bounce depending on how hard they're hitting the floor, which makes it look so soft! 😍 (I'm sure someone reading this would tell me otherwise.)
So, it was really important for me to try and demonstrate that in the animation. Soft paws! I learnt through tutorials that basically all you've got to do is copy the run cycle and paste that at the end of the walk cycle. Maya can do that right? So I had the two maya files open and...ctrl+C...ctrl_V. It didn't work. I just got the red box in the bottom right telling me there's nothing to paste. Okay, lets try that again....right click..copy..right click...paste. Nope didn't work again. Am I missing something here? So, I had a dig online looking for any tips and every tutorial or thread spoke about using the plug in 'Animbot' to copy and paste over the animations. So I downloaded the free trial and wow...finally! It'd been hours running around in circles, my hair was a mess and I realized I forgot to make lunch. But we've got both cycles in one timeline! Now we can get to the actual hard bit. 😭
Feedback that I often got from my run cycle was that it wasn't "strong" enough. I get that, I think I went a little too far on the softness. I suppose it's mainly about finding that balance of not making it look crazy but also making her look like she's really chasing something. But is she? Maybe she's just in a hurry? Anyways, as a first time animating a quadruped run, I had a lot of fun. I loved thinking about the anatomy of the lion's shoulder blade. The rolling of each blade - one up one down - was really important for me. I think it's watch catches my eye the most when I watch these big cats walking, stalking and running.
I think I could have pushed the shoulder blades more and definitely made her run with more intention. It's about asking myself that "why are they doing it?" question while animating.