Walkcycle workflow

[blackchicken]

Hello, I would like to know what is your workfllow for walkcycle animation in Houdini. I have created digital asset for little fish which I want animate. I have all parameters which I need only for animation on digital asset and now i need walkcycle. Fish will be part of large fishball system say 1000 peaces. Every fish has different shift. So i need one scene for animating fish, slow, middle speed and fast motion. Then Ill export cached mesh and then play with stamping velocity......

So in Maya. I set post and pre infinity in graph editor and then anime say 36 frame walkcycle and then offseting curves which still has 36 frames. But say on frame 3 in same channels theres no physicaly curve just preinfinity. I dont want key all offseting curves on frame say one and last frame. I want clean curves just offset and let infinity do the job.Than cache only 36 frames. Done.

But infiny I can do in houdini with chops so Ill owerride my values in otl. And then I animate curves inside chops? But if I want change somethink in viewport on controls, they will be locket by chops. Or i should implement chops infinity directly into otl and connect it directly to my otl contols? Or is there other way how I can animate by controls on my fish, offset curves but still have some hidden post pre
infinity Like in maya? What is your workflow. Thanks a lot......BC.....

Edited February 8, 2014 by blackchicken

[edward]

Put your cycle at the beginning of frame 1. Then key the *last* frame in your range. Now change the expression for this to something like

cycle(1, $IT*$FPS+1)

PS. Or try removing the +1 if it's not matching.

[jordibares]

Hi, I am sure it is a valid approach but somehow I have been fascinated but crowd behaviour for a long time and during my professional life I have started to dig really deep to get natural behaviour to surface.

 

My point is that you are modelling a school of fish as if they where points avoiding each other and grouping with a set cycle of movement without any connection to the actual behaviour of the individual. What I call outside-inside design.

 

I would ask, because I don't know how to model this in houdini yet, how to do the opposite, design the individual and set the conditions for the school to behave as it should.

 

Meaning, it is the individual's space awareness (far, close, too close, collision), motivations (cruising, escaping, following, etc...) and its driving character (shy/brave) that will define its animation (not a cycle btw) and its speed and orientation.

 

Ultimately on a school of fish you can see the external individual's behaviour totally different from the safe internal ones and when modelling such a group behaviour these things are way more interesting than the old flocking algorithms and you have to start taking in account multiple priorities in the decision making of EACH individual.

 

I use massive for crowds and that is exactly the kind of behaviour I have been modelling for more than 9 years and still today looks natural against other point (attraction/repulsion) based solutions.

 

That said I would probably think of the cycle as a set of cycles; cruising, scape acceleration transition, full sped, deceleration transition, corrections moves, lateral moves (L+R), turns (L+R), quick emergency turns (L+R) and then use these various animation clips with a set of sequencing strategy so you transition from A to B only when it is correct to do such and with a certain duration per transition. For example, you would transition from cruising to full speed when the fish body position is in a edge position (like an S when it can propel itself more), etc...

 

With that "agent" you will then replicate the agent with random variations on the motivation, spacial sensitivity and driving parameters which will, together with a priority based steering behaviour give you the crowd you really would see in real life.

 

Of course you want it to be directable so it is fair to say you will also what to model events to force things to evolve in a certain way, etc… but again I will suggest to design it form the inside out as crowd behaviour when working on limitations of a group easily becomes unstable. I would for example add a sphere that pumps their energy or driving parameters up (as if it was a charging battery) , or a comfort parameter when they are navigating close to a curve rather than forcing the crowd to get to a certain distance of the curve.

 

Hope the point of view I want to portray is clear, ultimately I don't know how to do this in houdini and therefore I will in the meantime keep using massive for all these projects but hopefully some advanced users here could shed some light on how to do this.

 

Thanks.

[blackchicken]

 Thanks a lot for answer. As I found, the best way is anime your parameters on HDA and then save keys as animation groups in graph editor, so you have quick acces.  Then use motion effect cycle for all parameters. Thats all then in graph editor you can move your curves in time but with same length because of walk cycle, For example tentacles, or in my case fish tail is exactly what you must do. Cycle could do work to, but in case that you dont move curve often. Because you must set first and last point in expression. WHich is really boring for 20 bones for example. But cycle chop do the job automaticaly. Thanks a lot!!! 

[edward]

WHich is really boring for 20 bones for example. But cycle chop do the job automatically.

 

Sure. Note also that it's not that hard to do using the table mode in the channel editor once you have all your channels grouped.

[edward]

Ultimately on a school of fish you can see the external individual's behaviour totally different from the safe internal ones and when modelling such a group behaviour these things are way more interesting than the old flocking algorithms and you have to start taking in account multiple priorities in the decision making of EACH individual.

 

You have a good point but I'm not sure about your comparison to the "old flocking algorithms". I think of flocking as steering behaviours, which is pretty "inside out"?