Walk Cycle

I found a website which talks you through basic walk cycle techniques.A walk cycle can be described by four distinct poses: CONTACT, RECOIL, PASSING and HIGH-POINT. This is a contact pose.

The feet are at their furthest extension in the walk. That is their most extreme position in the cycle. That alone makes this the most critical pose in the sequence.

This shows the keyframes of a walk cycle moving across the screen. The most important pose is the contact pose.

Rigging

This is the rig i have made, the hands are controllable through the attributes by changing the values the fingers move. There are leg and knee controls along with hip. There are also controls for the spine, the neck and the head along with the arms and elbows. The only issue i have is that the tutorial was for a soft bound one piece figure whereas my model is more robotic and rigid and it doesn't say how to attach the parts to it.

Hand

I created new attributes and used the set driven key tool to link the values with rotation meaning the hand is far more easily controllable.

Neck Controls

For this i had to add a few more joints as to make the neck move more properly. I then used the connection manager to link the rotations and parented the control to the collar joint.

I then applied the same methods to the head and parented the control to the top of the neck which allows the head to move independently but still connected to the neck.

Spine Control

I made a curve which i will use as a spine control, i snapped the centre point to the joint just above the spine. Then parented it to the central pelvis joint or root joint.

I then opened the connection editor to tell the computer that when the curve moves so should these certain points of the spine and linked the rotation factors together.

Arm Controls

Start by making a curve and snapping the centre point of it to the wrist, i then selected the control and the ik handle and then constrained these points. After this i selected the control and then wrist joint and oriented them.

I then created a cube and snapped it to the shoulder joint. Then selecting the control and the shoulder ik they are point constrained meaning they move around that point. I then parented this control to the central spine collar joint.

Knee Control

I made a sphere moved the centre pivot to the knee, i then changed the spheres attributes so as to make it invisible in the render. Then select the control and the ankle IK and constrain pole vector. This allows the kneecap to move with the control. After that i parented the knee control to the foot control allowing them to move together.