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Editing Active Footsteps

One of the most powerful features of footsteps is the ability to adapt keyframes automatically to edits you make to your footstep pattern. By analogy, the footsteps become a kind of gizmo for manipulating the keyframes of your character's animation. In most cases, edits you make to footsteps act upon your keys in an intuitive fashion.

In order to understand what happens when active footsteps are edited, you must first understand what happens to biped keys when footsteps are activated. See Understanding Footstep and Body Keys.

Key Adaptation for Footstep Placement Edits

When you move or rotate active footsteps as described in Editing Footstep Placement, the biped's keys are immediately influenced by the edit. The following keyframe tracks are influenced in the vicinity of the edited footsteps:

  • Body Horizontal keys change to step or hop within range of new footstep locations
  • Body Vertical keys change to match possible changes in stride length, since the center of mass must move lower to step longer distances
  • Body Turning (Body Rotation) keys change to bank into turns created by changes in path curvature or body speed
  • Right or left leg keys in a Move state (when the leg is not in a footstep) are adapted to step between new locations

Other keys are preserved in the adaptation process. For example, if you animate the body to kneel while turned to the right, altering a nearby footstep will maintain the biped's height and turning motion as much as possible.

Key Adaptation for Footstep Timing Edits

To edit active footsteps in time, follow the methods described in Editing Footstep Timing. Keyframes affected by the edit are updated immediately.

A fundamental factor in how your keyframes are adapted is whether the sequence of leg support transitions has changed. Changing the relationship between opposite leg keys effectively changes the gait, which causes entirely new keyframes to be generated at that point.

  • If you move footstep keys in such a way that you remove an overlap or create a new overlap between opposite legs, you have changed the gait, and new keys will be generated for legs.
  • If you do not change the overlap relationship between opposite legs, existing legs keys are retained.
Warning: Editing a jumping sequence so that the feet hit or leave the ground slightly out of phase rather than at the same time introduces a change in the leg-support sequence. Hence, even in this case, the leg keys will be locally replaced with default keys.
Note: If you scale the biped's feet in Figure mode after activating footsteps, then turn off Figure mode, character studio will recalculate the footstep display size and the footstep dynamics automatically.

Locking Keys

You can lock specified tracks to prevent them from adapting automatically when you move active footsteps. The controls in the Footstep Adapt Locks group on the Dynamics & Adaptation rollout lock specified tracks.

Procedures

To prevent keys from changing when active footsteps are edited:

  1. In the Motion panel Dynamics & Adaptation rollout Footstep Adapt Locks group, select the types of keys you want to lock.
  2. Move, rotate, scale, or bend active footsteps.

    The tracks you lock are unaffected by footstep editing.

Parent topic: Editing Footstep Motion

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