Animating a character often will mean animating character walks and run cycles. Looking at a standard five-pose guide for a walks cycle, it’s pretty clear that a footroll plays an important part. When you are animating in 3D, the footRoll attribute on an IK leg control can sometimes trip-up an animator. Of course we are talking about the “knee pop”, and how to get rid of it.
[pullqoute align=“right”]A look at how the Foot Roll attribute on IK leg controls can sometimes trip us up when animating walks and runs[/pullqoute]
Maya Animator Brian Horgan discusses some of the things to look out for when animating walks and runs, and talks about the footroll in particular. Brian walks through a couple of scenarios for animating a footroll and shows how you can clean things like the dreaded “knee pop” within the animation.
Brian also walks through an alternative approach to animating character foot roll that in some cases, can offer much cleaner results, right away, with less clean up involved.
