Problem with Malcolm's walk cycle

[AmberLD]

Hello,

I've received great tips on the Malcolm rig from here before, and I'm back with another question I was hoping someone might be able to help me rectify.

I created a simple walk for Malcolm (2 steps) and want it to cycle, moving Malcolm forward. I've gone into Maya's Graph Editor after selecting the keyframed controls and set curves to "cycle with offset" for pre- and post-infinity. Malcolm continues moving forward, but the legs begin to twist in weird ways that are not at all like I animated!

I know this is probably near impossible to diagnose without any visuals...I wish I could upload a file or something. Perhaps I'll try playblasting the issue (saving playblasts has been tricky for me, but I'll give it a shot) and upload it so that I can add a link to this thread.

Any tips would be very much appreciated! Thank you in advance

[AmberLD]

Okay, here are the links!

Good Malcolm: This is what happens before I apply Cycle>Cycle with offset pre- and post-infinity. I've only animated about halfway through the playblast (the two steps) and I want to keep it cycling accurately.


Bad Malcolm: This is what happens after I select all the keyframed controls and apply Cycle>Cycle with offset pre- and post-infinity. As you can see, Malcolm does continue moving in the same direction, but the animation is really weird - in fact, it's weird from the very first frames.


Hope this helps give a little clearer picture of my problem. As always, any tips/suggestions are very much appreciated!

[admin]

The knee direction is determined by the pole vector controls: ctlLegPoleVectorLf and Rt.

Just move/animate them further out.

[AmberLD]

Thank you, that makes sense! Unfortunately, it still hasn't entirely rectified the problem.

I tried moving the pole vector controls as recommended, and while it did prevent the legs from buckling backwards, they still stretch out a ridiculous amount and Malcolm is still doing these crazy jumps! (see new video) I've tried both moving the pole vector controls forward after applying the Curves>Cycle with offset, as well as selecting the pole vector controls along with the other keyframed controls before I perform the Curves>Cycle with offset command so that it is applied to them as well.

Can you think of any other suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong here? Thank you!

[admin]

Hi. This is not a rig problem.
You just need to animate the legs so they don't spread. The cycles need to be the same frame length per side, as a start.