Stephen Cunnane is a previs artist at leading VFX facility Framestore. Topics covered include the importance of importing a rig as a proxy, using Maya’s Reference Editor to keep the scene organised, baking, motion tracking, and using animation layers to add secondary motion. He also provides breakdowns of foot and body movement and explains how to take a final walk cycle and build a new animation for use in production. Using a free dragon character rig created by Truong CG Artist, Cunnane sets up a basic walk cycle in Maya, before animating the dragon’s wings, neck and head to create a convincing creature animation. In the workshop, which comprises over three hours of video training, Cunnane sets out the fundamental principles of animating a convincing walk cycles for four-legged animals and fantasy creatures. Master the fundamentals of animating quadruped walk cycles in Maya This course it’s an insight on how to bring that spark of life into a human character and once you follow this workflow you’ll be able to animate any human walk, with any type of rig because the secret is the same.The Gnomon Workshop has released Animating Creature Walk Cycles in Maya: a guide to animating quadruped walk cycles recorded by Framestore previs artist Stephen Cunnane. Therefore, this course offers an insight into human locomotion concepts in connection to the animation pipeline. Understanding the mechanics behind real human locomotion is crucial for a walk animation. You will develop a strong foundation on how to build the animation from blocking the first key contact posses, to cleaning the motion graphs, to adding the final body overlaps.

Throughout the course, we’ll build the mechanics of the walk cycle through several and progressive animation passes.

This workflow is the base for both 3D films and games. The aim of the course is to showcase the animation pipeline of creating an organic and well-balanced 3D walk cycle.

3D Walk Cycle Animation using Autodesk Maya is an intermediate 3D Animation course that teaches how to animate a human walk cycle.

Maya walk cycle