Untitled

Polish the Walk Cycle

Set up the scene:

■ Continue from the previous lesson, or navigate to the
\animation\character_animation\quadruped folder, and open
quadruped_walk_4.max.
If a dialog asks whether you want to use the scene’s Gamma And LUT
settings, accept the scene Gamma settings, and click OK.

Collapse the layers:

1 Select any part of the quadruped, then go to the Motion

panel.

2 On the Layers rollout, click Collapse.

Now the scene contains only a single layer of Biped animation: the keys

you created on the Center of Mass & Spine layer are transferred to the main

timeline.

Smooth out the trajectories:

1 Click and Ctrl+click to select all four of the quadruped’s feet.

2 Open the Curve Editor.

3 If you need to, pan the Controller window until you can see the tracks

for all four feet. Expand the hierarchy if you need to, and Ctrl+click to

select all four Transform tracks.

Animating a Quadruped Walk | 1027