Climbing stairs animation- feet going through stairs

[branskyj]

Hi all,

 

I am absolutely new to animation and trying to animate a man climbing stairs. I rigged the man successfully, then used the Biped function Footstep Mode/Walk and placed the steps according to the staircase. When playing the animation I can see the front of the feet going through the steps before being placed where they have to. Is there any way to easily avoid that or is it all about manual key framing?

 

Thanks a lot for any help.

[Corey Beaulieu]

You may be able to adjust the shape of the step in the Curve Editor, but there is no magical "Avoid Stair" Button.

 

I'd save a copy and mess with the curves for a bit. if that doesn't work, start manually keying it.

[hockley91]

I always have that problem with Motion Capture BIP data...I don't know how to solve that. I tried to adjust the points of the MoCAP data, but I messed up so much and could never re-skin correctly and the model got stretched and distorted and kind of just gave up.

[branskyj]

Well, that settles it then. I will have to get familiar with animation techniques. It's just a shame because the aim of the project is completely different anyway.

Thanks a lot for the information, guys. Have a good one.

[Nicolai Bongard]

People in stairs are hard to animate. If you are just starting out with animation, i would recommend that you do "the broad strokes" first when animating, as in first you move your biped character from the bottomn to the top of the stairs, taking as long as you think it should. Only select and keyframe the "diamond" of the biped, as all parts of the biped will follow. Then you start adding details like perhaps a small pause on each step so that it looks like the person has weight and does not "float" up the stairs. Then you can add the movement of the legs. If you only require the shot to be while the character is walking the steps, not the start and end of it, you could in theory animate just two steps (one for each foot) and loop it. Animation can be a pain, but when you finally achieve something that looks good it is really satisfying. Good luck!