Mastering the Blender Run Cycle: Tips and Tricks for Animators!

[Music] foreign [Music] welcome to this Run Cycle tutorial my name is Alex the process of creating a run cycle is similar to creating a walk there are two differences the posing and the timing are different the posing in a run is pushed so the distance between the body parts in extreme poses is greater than in a walk the timing is also quicker so the tempo is snappier those are the only two differences between a run and a walk a run is useful for getting the character from point A to point B quicker cinematically run as grade for getting the viewer up close and into the action World a typical Run Cycle is 12 frames I'll start with those 12 but will most likely end with a 14 frame Run Cycle those two extra frames help slow things down just enough so the action reads more clearly I find in a run you get less personality than you do in a walk mainly because you have half the frames to work with if you have seen my walk cycle tutorial you'll know how important personality is to a wand I'll leave a link in the description to that tutorial but despite having half the frames to work with broadly speaking there's only one purpose for a run and that is determination maybe a character is trying to save someone catch a bus maybe trying to run away from someone generally people run for a reason and that's the kind of run I'm going to demonstrate a run with purpose I'm going to jump into blender now so we can get started for this Run Cycle tutorial I'll be using this free Mario rig I got from Agora websites I'll leave a link in the description to the rig really the most important part is the posing once you have a nice pose you mirror it now you have two poses then you duplicate it to the end and it just Cycles between that same pose that you build so we're going to spend quite a bit of time five minutes just on that one pose then we'll mirror it like I said and we'll just watch that animation if it's playing well we know we can continue if we don't think it's playing well I'll keep iterating on that pose until I'm happy with him and then I'll move from there I'll move forward from there after that the timing is is going to be a 12 or 14 frame Run Cycle we'll decide as we do it so the timing is locked that's what we'll stick to but after the posing I mirror it and like I said I watch the animation once I'm happy with it I'll start working on one foot just the contact and I'll essentially do a first pass a cleanup first pass on that one foot making sure it's cycling pretty nicely then I'll copy those keys mirror to the other foot all of a sudden it looks pretty good at this point that Cog that center of gravity control hasn't been moving up and down we'll add that second and that's when the Run starts to take shape once I add the Cog up and down I'll go back to the foot and refine the foot the contact the knee popping then I'll duplicate it to the other foot and then it then it starts to really take shape the smoothness at least then from there I work up the spine the rotation from the Cog up to the spine then I'll do the shoulders and the arms the timing tighten the timing up and lastly I'll do the head so that's the process so let's do that together right now okay so first thing go ahead and go to the animation workspace in here you greeted three panels you got your left window your right window and you'll be greeted to your dope sheet here I like to change it by hitting control tab it takes us to our graph editor and you got your timeline down here I just pull it up let's set our frame range to 12 right now we're not going to be using the panel uh the properties panel here I'll pull that to the side for the windows we have these buttons here these just display different uh things in your scene what I like to do is turn this one off so then I'm only seeing the geometry and then over here if it's off just go ahead and turn it on I'm going to select the rig control tab to get into pose mode I'm going to hit a to select all the controls and you can see the keys in the timeline and also in the graph editor I'm going to go Ctrl R Control G and we'll redo the post together so you can see what I think when I do a pose a to select all X and I'm just going to delete all those keys the reason Mario looks like this and not what we expect him to so up here we have shaded mode you have a textured mode here so if I were to play my animation now you can see in the display my frames per second is 15 frames if this particular rig showed the textures and played the animation on 24 frames I would keep it on texture mode but it doesn't so I just turn it to smooth shading here and you can see that I'm getting 24 25 frames per second so that's important to know where you find that is in your options over here and you can hit this text info so we're ready to animate we have our Windows ready Mario's in the scene and we have our timing our our frame range set so let's start posing together in blender we have this xmir option over here so I turn that on only at the beginning when I'm posing the finger so I don't have to do the other hand for this I'm just going to select Mario's fingers those top four and just deselect everything else if you do alt said you can see through your through your mesh just making sure I didn't select anything else and one important thing you'll see that I cycle between my move tool my rotation tool in a different way than I found most people to do that and I just hit spacebar you see G and R and so that's all I do I hit spacebar G spacebar R and that's how I jump between gizmos so with those fingers selected I'm just gonna curl them together and we're going to create a fist so there's my fingers and it's the same on the other side also I'd like to just start with those hands down a little bit okay so I'm going to turn this x mirroring off hit a to select all and on frame one I'm just going to set a key I and what I did there is I hit I and it set a key on location rotation but typically when you hit I it brings up that menu and asks you what you want a key and that that bothers me here's how you how you get rid of that you have to be in object mode so you're coming over here go to object animation and change King set and then I set it to location rotation so now when I key anything and I hit I it always Keys those things without asking I have this initial kind of default pose I just manipulated the fingers and brought down brought the hands down now I'm going to start to do the extreme pose the contact pose when he when that back foot pushes off the ground and in a run what's different from a run as compared to a walk and we talked about it in the intro really it's just posing and timing but there is one other difference and that is in a run there is a portion of the run where both feet are off round in a walk at least one foot is always on the ground let's go ahead and go create that contact pose just as he's leaving the ground so I'm going to pick this this right leg here and push that back and all I'm going to do is try to make it an aggressive pose something that you saw just earlier as I as I had the scene open you saw Mario really pushing off the ground and and I liked how that looked I'm going to grab that Cog and just rotate him for it as well cool and let's bring him up and what we're doing is just sculpting that first pose very rough just getting the idea there if we look at his feet his left leg is forward and in a run or a walk whatever happens on the feet in terms of what leg is forward it's the opposite for the hands and the chest so his left leg is forward that means his right hand is going to come forward so I'm just going to grab that chest here and rotate it so now it's opposite to what's happening on the bottom and just being aggressive about the post for now not worrying too much about cleanliness and the back arm and shoulder would go back we're more worried about the idea at the beginning is it working is it reading well and if it's a no then you keep shaping it and if the idea is starting to work then you know you're on the right track so here's a first pass of this pose I'm going to select all insert a key and now what I'm going to do is go one frame over and refine the pose so here's an idea and what I like to do now is push this pose compare it to what I've done already here's the update to the pose I spent maybe another minute or two just updating things so here's that original one we just did together and you can see that just scrubbing through it the poses pushed a little more and that's what I'm after you can see there's a really nice line I'm not worried still about the bending and knee I'll add that after but it's much stronger here and I like that it feels like he's pushing off I'm starting to get a little bit of silhouette depending the angle of course between the arms so yeah I'm on the right track there this is the process I do once there's a pose that I know is important I'll iterate on that pose twice five times depending how important the pose is but here's what I'm going to do now so I know this pose that I just updated is stronger because it looks better so I'm going to go back to this pose and delete it no longer is useful to me and now I'll just move forward a few frames we're just still working on the one pose and frame three and frame seven are the same pose frame one is that an initial default pose we just modified it a little bit and now I can select these two keys hit V and just go automatic what happens in the graph editor is by doing automatic it overshoots it's the same pose but it overshoots because of that initial pose so that overshoot is important to me because I'm now using the computer to push my pose to elongate my pose and just see if there's a better appeal that the computer now is giving me all I do is I scrub between it and you can see how much more I pushed the pose here's that original it's a little better already I like even if it's a little bit I like that pose better if I keep going you can see how extreme it starts to get and maybe it's too much and you judge that I like this Frame because the the shape in the arms are a little more exaggerated and the feet is a little too much but I'll pull those in so I'm going to insert a key on that frame copy that Ctrl C and I'll just paste it back over here I'm going to delete those keys don't need them anymore and again now I'll just iterate on that pose you see how important this one idea is because in a Run Cycle the run is so quick really you're just trying to sell the attitude the personality but the attitude and it's for me usually a run is a determination so I loved seeing that angle on the on the body and so that's why I spend a good five minutes 10 minutes sometimes if it's important 20 minutes on a pose selling this idea now that I've liked the idea I'm going to start cleaning maybe some of the controls that I've used so that's what I'm going to do now mainly in the foot I don't want to hyperextend too much here on this particular rig there's this one control that I can start to pull down this little hip control and you can see it already cleans that up and I like that and you can see that this one contact pose it's almost his foot's off the ground but I'm not worried about that because you're almost sculpting every frame there's only 12 frames to work with so if you got up to this point nice job because it's not easy to pose so hopefully what you saw gives you some ideas for your own animations okay so we have this pose a to select all what we're going to do now is come to frame 13. I'm going to insert a key and then frame 7 insert a key in the graph editor I can hit a select all the keys period numpad just frames frame V and I'm just going to set everything to vector you could set it to um clamped and that's really ease in and out between those poses and the reason for that is when I scrub between keyframes and it's in linear it's in Vector there's no warping of time or spacing between those keys it's linear so I find it a little more accurate to what I'm gonna get and then I can add um I can favor one pose or another so from frame one all the way to frame six is the first half of your run frame seven is the start of the second half of the Run Cycle so from frame 7 to frame 12 is the next six frames of the Run Cycle frame 13 is a duplicant of frame one and that's how it just repeats and Loops so whenever you're working on a on a run cycle or a walk cycle you can test your work to see if it's going to cycle properly just by going to frame one and frame 13. you can see right now the pose is the same because there's only one pose if there's a difference a movement of change you know that something's off with your cycle so that's a very quick way to test it okay so I'm just going to select one of the keys doesn't matter which one control C come to frame seven and I have it as a hotkey q paste flect so I'm going to undo that and show you where that is so I just did Ctrl C and over here under key you can come on over to paste flipped and it just mirrors your pose getting here is very important so we worked on the pose we've talked about the timing now we're going to play our animation and here's what that looks like cool so it doesn't look that impressive but again it's important step to to look at even at this stage it's a little easier on a wonk because the character is not angled it's the character is up and down but even at this stage you can make modifications before you commit because once you start laying a whole bunch of keys it's harder than to go back while there's more keys involved so even over here you can start to tweak your posing and just move around your your model your your animation your character and just see if you like what you're seeing so what I'm going to do before I move forward I'm going to add some rotation on the body right now there's there's barely there's nothing really so I'm going to come to frame one and let's start adding a little bit of rotation on the Cog and the chest and just so we're seeing that already built in and then we can we can always update that I'm going to grab this and maybe just say five degrees cool insert a key go back to the Head and minus five that's how simple that update is Ctrl C go back over here you saw that change so that's how I know it's not going to fully cycle nicely Ctrl V I'm going to come in over here and go paste flip okay let's watch it now so now there's a little more movement in that Cog a little more movement in everything because of that small rotation on the Cog already that's going to help now what we're going to do is work on the feet once we start seeing that foot cycle and then we paste it to the other side and then we finally add that Cog up and down that's when the Run Cycle takes shape so we're just going to worry about this back foot on our walk cycle it's easier because this other foot that's in the air normally would be on the ground and it's much easier to think about but in the case of the run it's in the air so we don't have a place that we know we're getting to right now so it's a little more difficult but that's okay I'm going to select this one and I know over this time period all it's doing is getting into the air so I'm going to I'm going to skip over this part for now and worry about the foot contact so here the foot's in the air and basically over six frames it's got to get back down here you can see how aggressive that is and one of the nice things I like about working on a 12-frame run cycle is I like to work evenly spaced so you can see I'm on frame one I can go to frame three that's two frames apart frame five two frames a form apart then frame seven two frames apart so I'm going to go to frame nine and keep my spacing even alt R alt G and it's going to reset the values of that control and it's just going to set it back to what the default values are vector so I know and I'm going to just be aggressive about it this foot needs to be back here by frame 13. so it Cycles nicely let's just select this key with those two controls all I have is this foot control and then that roll those two controls G I'm going to move it over one and frame 10 is really that contact foot and then it goes back and when it goes back you want to make sure it's a linear its vector and so because when I block everything is linear to begin with it just makes it easier and on frame 13 on a walk cycle I would never rotate that foot control up only when it's in the air when I rotate it on normally it's the the heel control that lifts the foot that's what I would rotate on but here to achieve that pose I did this control which just plays with that heel lifting but I also rotated the foot control up to achieve this pose so I'm going to go to frame 12 and basically reset the pose again so I'm going to select those two keys or pardon me those two controls alt R alt G just resets your values and I'm just going to pull it back and kind of eyeball it take this control and this is my foot roll there it is in a run you're sculpting a lot more things than you would in a walk cycle things are just more aggressive and it depends on the Run Cycle this one is a very pushed pose and so the distance of the body parts are just further apart so be aware of that so all I'm doing in the second half is worrying about this foot contact really there's only going to be three frames of foot contact for this whole Run Cycle frame 10 frame 11 frame 12. frame 13 is already kind of starting to left but you could consider it so three or four frames of foot contact on the ground um and really I'm working with these three frames here let's worry about the little Arc here and then we'll come back and and clean this up we'll copy the keys on this foot and then paste it to the other foot okay so I'm going to come to frame nine and frame nine is this foot almost contacting the ground just gonna select these two controls I'm only working with these two foot controls the main foot control and that heel control just reset the values insert a key and all I'm doing is posing the foot contact is almost about to hit the ground something like that so he's about to contact in any contacts and then here he's in the air there I'm going to add a pose let's just do it now you can see how quickly we can start to key every frame again we're only working with 12 frames and the foot in a walk and in a run is the most complicated cool so you can see how we've sculpted that idea we started with our key pose mirrored it and then we know we got to get into that foot extension again so we just picked a frame and reset the values so it's on the ground slit it forward then when two frames further down the timeline reset the values again and now we're just playing with that foot how how the distance that the foot is on the ground and then we came back and sculpted these two in between poses so let's worry about the first half Here and Now same thing let's go two frames it makes the timing a little easier and I find in a Run Cycle especially a determined Run Cycle like this that the very right as the foot's leaving the ground it's nice to continue that foot extending back and it just feels like you're really pushing off and then I'll use these other four frames to get back into this pose into this bent pose there so we're on frame three now I have this foot control selected and I also like to reset the value of of this one here so if I come to frame seven you can see on the graph editor that this curve right here gets reset I like to do that over a shorter amount of time so over these two frames already reset it so it's just like that I'm controlling when it resets and I want to do it in a short distance I might even do it over here but it doesn't really matter and then I'll pose it just with this foot that's the preference that I like so here's what we have this foot's pushing off and I want that toe to feel like it's still pushing so I'm just going to rotate it back and I'm going to pull it back I'm not worried about the hyperextension yet I'm going to fix that what I'm worried about are thinking about is making sure that this foot feels like it's still pushing back or propelling us forward so just just just posing that and now I'm gonna just pull it back a little more and maybe it starts to come up insert a key and then it's coming into that pose and even this post could probably already start pushing forward a bit more and then down you see this is Extreme the foot the just look at the shape of the foot right there on frame seven it's it's here very meat it's there that's pretty good and then all of a sudden frame nine it's down there the spacing between the placement of the foot over one frame is too big and so that's why I say on this particular run it's quite pushed um I'm starting with a 12 frame Run Cycle and then I'm going to add two more frames one frame on each side of the half of the run just to slow it down and that's where I'm going to slow it down right in between there and it's going to help not look so fast don't look so poppy so just be aware of that and when we do it I'll explain it I'm going to select the foot control and select our heel control there that comes up just those two controls perfect we can test that it's cycling correctly 13 and one you see there's no movement I have those two control selected one and one I'm going to come in over here and hit a that selects all the keyframes Ctrl C perfect then select the same controls and in that order as well I like to delete every keyframe except the first ones so I'm going to go to frame one and we're going to paste flipped and so sometimes this happens where the pace flip just doesn't work well and here's what I like to do I'm going to undo I'm going to reset the values it doesn't happen often that the payslip doesn't work for me but it happens sometimes I'm going to retry it again so I'm going to select the controls both controls Ctrl C coming over here perfect there needs to be at least one key and then let's Place flipped again and this time it worked so if it doesn't work try resetting the values of the control you're pasting to and then in rare cases if that still doesn't work try just copying one at a time and pasting it um so give that a try if you're having issues and this is always fun just to see the legs or the hands doing the same thing the left foot that I just pasted to the two controls are still there I'm going to select a Ctrl C copy everything and coming over here to frame 13 remember frame 1 and frame 13 are the same so I'm going to paste over frame 13 because frame one's the same I had a comment on my walk cycle tutorial from ganapathy and he made a very good point that now when we have to shift the keys over it might be hard to know exactly what frame you got to stop on so basically frame seven is going to end up on frame one and this is his suggestion right click and you can change the color change it to anything you want now it's visually different so I'm going to select a which selects all my keys and you can see that this key is different with everything selected a again I can hit G and move everything and now I know when I reach that color it needs to land on frame one once it's on frame one everything is offset correctly I can right click and just set everything so the color is the same so very good point thank you and you can see what the feet look like now kind of looks a bit like a duck but the feet are cycling pretty nicely even with the hyperextension let's add the Cog and this run cycle is really going to start to take shape how I'm playing my animation and going from panel to panel is they're just hotkeys and I go over that in my beginner's tutorial so if you're interested uh check that out let's select the Cog and we're going to worry about the up and down now so I always like to orient myself to the side um that's pushing off it's easier for me to understand that this leg is pushing off and for those first few frames after that push off basically Mario's pushing him myself up so that's how I know that CLG needs to go up and then just around here just before we go up again on the next half cycle somewhere in here the CLG needs to come down and Mario needs to take the weight so let's go two frames and all we're going to do is pull Mario up just like that insert a key so now he's pushing up and now I'm going to go two frames over we're going to pull Mario down and we're going to pull Mario down just enough you saw that knee Bend right there perfect that gives me a good idea that that's a good distance insert a key I'm going to select these two frames Ctrl C coming over here two frames over and I'm going to paste flipped perfect let's play our animation cool so it's a rough idea of of the Cadence of the distance of the up and down but already Mario starting to take shape so if you got to this point really nice job from this point it only gets easier because we're going to refine the the up and down of the Cog and then once we have the Cog looking well moving the way we want everything else on the top half falls into place the chest falls into place because of the timing of the Cog the hands they're kind of a little different but already the hands blocked are looking pretty good and then the head falls into place based off the timing of the chest so we'll spend a few minutes on the CLG just making sure we're happy with that timing once we're happy with the timing of the CLG as well we'll go back to the feet and do one more cleanup pass now that we have more information we can refine and get rid of the hyperextensions so sometimes I like to open this up and you can see I have values you can select those three and hit shift H and and then period on pad a to select all period num pad to zoom in so here's that up and down that's what that looks like this other two curves are pretty messy and they're not even important really what that is is the left and right and the forward and back for some reason this rig when right now I'm in local space so you can see I rotated Mario down and the the arrow is is on a diagonal but even if I go to my world orientation you saw I just changed I'm in global his Gizmo didn't change so um I if if I could change that yes I would pull him straight up you wouldn't see any of this mess here so that's the case I'm just going to delete these I don't need them you can see how easy that is all I'm worried about is the up and down so I'm going to go coming over here shift H I'm only going to look at that curve and we're just gonna make this curve look good you might find that at times your curve looks like this at the beginning and the end and if they do I what I would do select the two keys and together just rotate them because what's happening is this movement's coming up and it's coming up at the end into that same direction so that's how I how I make sure the cycle also continues smoothly so we're pushing up now all I'm doing is looking at um the up and down of the movement and overall I think the extremes the extremes meaning the the very height of the the run and the very bottom of the run the extreme poses I think are good and now if it was more what it would do it would make the head um more unrecognizable more movement and one important thing to note is so I'm building a determined rotten cycle it's great because Mario is going to look good in a full body from any angle but if I needed to then cut into a mid shot or close-up on Mario while running and talking I would just come to these curves and scale the values down just for that one close-up and all of a sudden there's less movement and you can see his expression so just know that that's how I deal with that and for me at the bottom I would still want to keep them um down a little more before he explodes out so I'm going to select these two keys because they're the same just going to make them Auto clamp and then I'm going to hit Ctrl deselect the key itself and the handle on both of the keys leaving me just with the handle on the right side G and X now I can pull it down and you can see if you're looking up at Mario he's just sliding further down so I'm controlling basically him staying lower for longer now he's coming up I like that and down here I want to be in the air longer same idea deselect deselect GX and you can see he's up in the error longer so all that is doing is the keys the extremes stayed the same but the the spacing the timing is snappier because I'm elongating the handles cool and so I'm happy with that and I got rid of Mario's side to side movement if Mario and I could go back and add it if this was a heavier character I would add it a little bit but you'll see I'll do a little bit of rotation and and I I find that looks good let's add a little bit of rotation on the on the X just forward a little bit and then the Cog is done let's select our rotate x shift H all we're going to do is look at this one value this one curve and same thing I start right back at the beginning because it's easier for me to understand Mario just pushed off and and he's going to open himself up really as he's coming down he's opening himself up when he comes down and we're just going to create that drag and so as he's pushing up really the Drake starts to come down it's more noticeable in the head but we'll do it in the Cog a little bit as well frame five I'm going to rotate him up so G and just find which way is up so it's the other way cool and you can see what's happening to the body it's just rotating up I'll make it more noticeable again so I'm building that dragons as the CLG goes down there's drag on the body rotating up and then when he lands the rotation goes back down and then the cycle is the same awesome so here's what we have so far we've cleaned up the CLG and we have the foot going the top half is still stiff because we haven't done anything really there let's go back clean up the feet and then we'll go and work on the chest so I like to start back with the same foot I was looking at and now what we're looking at is cleaning up some of the arcs overall I think it's looking pretty good and then the hyperextension and at this point too we can decide if we wanted to add those extra frames oh it's I think it's actually working on just as is here's what I was talking about before if I select all the controls hit a select all here's what we have so far frame 13 is the last frame so I'm just going to key that everything else here we just don't need that was the foot control that we pasted go to frame one I'm just going to insert a key make sure everything's keyed and I'm going to delete these keyframes frame 1 and 13 I can check you can see they're the same so the mirroring is is looking good so let's play this updated timing and you can see the end is is held a little longer and that's two extra frames actually help uh help see the Run Cycle a bit longer we just have to clean up that little Gap that we created so yeah I'll stick with the 14 frames frame by frame now I'm just pulling this one control down so there's a little bit of Bend in that knee so all I'm doing is now making this one leg as clean as possible looking at the spacing the arcs and then frame 12 it can have a bigger change right in here kind of held up a little longer and then still a bit of a knee Bend like he's building that power and then he's going to explode down and I hope you can see by this process too we're trying to work broadly and we did the foot pasted it to the other side mirrored it then we added the Cog and then cleaned some stuff up there now we're going back and cleaning the foot and adding the detail instead of posing it with the detail and I think you get lost that way just pose it roughly but pose it so the idea is reading okay I think we've cleaned up the one foot I'm just gonna play it and I'm just trying to concentrate on the foot closest to the camera and I'm just looking at the cycling I think it's looking pretty smooth so um I like it and so I'm going to select the foot I'm going to select the heel I'm going to select that hip control that allows me to play with the or get rid of the um the hyperextension and I'm also going to then select the toe control those four controls now are what is animated to make his foot look smooth cool so I have those four selected I'm going to insert a key and insert a key just make sure everything is keyed nicely let's test that everything is looking good and now it is I'm going to hit a control C every key is selected and I'm going to come over to the other side now select in that same order I think it makes a difference I haven't tried it but I'm used to doing it in the same order foot heel then I did that hip control here and then I did the toe here okay come to frame one I don't need any of these X I'm going to insert a key make sure everything's keyed and then we're going to paste flipped so I have it on the hotkey but again you can come it over to key and paste flipped perfect this time it worked so before it didn't I wasn't sure why but I showed you a workaround this time with everything selected it works again you can play it and have some fun and just see him running in a funny way with everything selected I'm going to hit a Ctrl C and paste over perfect this time we had frame seven because it was a 12 frame Run Cycle now we've updated the timing it's now a 14 frame Run Cycle so the middle is eight frames I'm going to select this keyframe I'm going to right click coming over here to keyframe type and just pick a color last time we did this extreme I'll just say green for this Jitter it doesn't matter a select all what we're after is just making it visually different we know that this key needs to end up on frame one for the foot then to cycle properly so everything selected a and G and we're going to move to the left until that green key is back at frame one right click keyframe type keyframe now the keys back to the same color so let's play what we have so now both feet are cycling nicely and it's working with the Cog and let's start to take shape it's a good looking Run Cycle let's select the chest and now we'll worry about that what we're going to add all all this is right now is a little side to side movement for the chest we're going to keep the side to side movement we're going to rotate up and down and translate up and down two so I'm going to select all and I'm just going to make things Auto clamped he'll come from more of a compressed pose as he's pushing off and then once he gets to the very top things open up and as he starts to come down things really open up frames five or frame six is a good place to just add some drag on the body I'm going to go to frame six so all I'm going to do is pull it up that's it and rotate this way that's the drag so here's what we have with the updated chest just a little more organic breaking things up a little bit let's work now on the shoulders and the arms and that's really going to help break things up and then we'll work on the head you can see how the head's stiff we'll break that up as well let's select the shoulder the upper arm the elbow and the wrist everything selected a and I'm going to make things Auto clamp Perfect come on over here to the shoulder and I'm going to go two frames over and what we're going to do is just add some drag on on the shoulder so I'm going to physically pull it in the direction it was coming from and by pulling it and rotating it we're we're making things separated feel organic so we're creating drag as that chest is rotating as it's rotating back we're pulling that shoulder forward and creating the drag so we're just posing it and as they swing back forward again I'll just go maybe two three forms we'll decide and delay it that's the drag there don't be afraid to translate things as well okay and then here I'm going to add another breakdown pulling it down and back cool and then it swings back into into the same pose as frame one and so just with doing it um on the shoulder this arm is much more determined much more aggressive it's basically what it's doing it's favoring the extreme poses and it's staying there longer and everything in between is snappier it's more cartoony so be aware of that I'm going to select the upper arm now and we're going to do the same thing we went two frames with the shoulder now we can go maybe three frames of the upper arm and we'll add even more drag and then with the elbow we'll go five frames or four frames we'll we'll bump it even an extra frame so everything starts to bend and just show a little bit of overlap by doing that but same idea as the shoulder it's just being delayed a little bit the general shape has been set I'm not going to deviate much from that but we're favoring the one idea the one pose longer now as it's swinging through the body I'm going to now with this control just tuck it closer to the body it's coming into that back pose here and maybe it's too high so I'm more I'm going to pull it down so I have somewhere to go I'm going to go three frames and then still pull it up you can see now the delay that I'm building into it delay the elbow so I'm on the elbow now and I'm going to delay it cool I'm going to copy Ctrl C it's got to be the same beginning and end and for the upper arm wind three frames now I'm going to go four frames and it's really bending I'm just trying to build really just trying to show the organic um overlap yeah and I could see it I could see it starting to bend there so that's great Big Bend here we're coming out over here and now maybe frame 12. I'm almost going to make it straight a little Bend let's see what that looks like all right so here's what that elbow looks like and it you can feel the bend so it's starting to look good and if I compare it to the other side everything is just a little more stiff by coming over here timing timing is more aggressive but the elbow is starting to bend so that's that's looking good and now I'm going to paste flipped perfect so that's what that looks like without offset let's add the offset so just like we did with the legs paste it and move it until that blue key is on frame one right click keyframe type go back to keyframe yeah Run Cycle is nice and aggressive we're really close to being done the cycle now cool select the head and a to select all period numpad And so there's our curve and let's go ahead and do a little bit of drag just like we've done with the chest a little drag as the body comes down the chin is going to go up and we might even translate that head up and really that's all that's needed so we're coming up and as we come down the head can be delayed up and then on frame eight frame 1 and 15 I'm going to pull that head back down a bit so over here I'm just gonna pull it up a little bit not much but you can see the delay that's being added and chin up a little bit insert a key control C come on over because this is two frames from the end of the half of the cycle two frames here one two and paste flipped perfect that head just goes up and so that's the drag and it comes back down awesome so here it's coming back down and then it's going to go back into this pose that we pulled up so here I'm going to push the head down into the body and a little bit of drag on the nose as well insert a key control C coming over here to the end and paste flipped Ctrl C and Ctrl V okay and there's our Run Cycle so if you got to this point really nice job it's not an easy thing to build a seamless Run Cycle that um that doesn't pop that Cycles nicely so it's not an easy thing to do so give it a couple tries if you're new to this give it a try know that it's rough come back a couple days from now are from from your first try and try it again and just go through the different steps okay I'm gonna give this um a quick render and and then this tutorial is done so I'll be back in just a second [Music] Here's the final animated run I hope you liked the tutorial and got value from it if you did please like the video so that I know this content is helpful focus on your posing and everything else will start to fall in line good luck thanks everyone bye-bye

Channel: Alex on Story

Views: 148,288

Keywords: tutorial, blender, blender run cycle, blender running animation, blender animation, blender tutorial, blender tutorial for beginners, blender animation tutorial, run cycle, run cycle animation, run cycle tutorial, run cycle animation tutorial, how to run cycle, run cycle blender, run cycle maya, run cycle blender tutorial, run cycle blender animation, run cycle reference, run cycle animation reference, animation run cycle, animation run cycle tutorial, run cycle poses

Id: pIrfIIiQvrg

Length: 45min 36sec (2736 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023