In this Blender video tutorial, I go over some basic animation, and then into how to do a general walk cycle. I also show you how to use the NLA (non-linear action) editor to loop the walk cycle, and then combine these two animations.
Note from David: The NLA editor stands for Non-Linear Action editor, not “animation” as mentioned in the video.
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- .blend file at the state of the tutorial
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26 Comments
Thanks for that tut!
just when i need it!
thanks a lot!
Wow, you got a very smooth walk cycle at first try!
Im guessing how many tuts are there left? Scene setup & render settings maybe?
Congratulations
I must say that your tutorials belong to the best I’ve seen so far. Very profesional. Thank you!
I bought the “Animating with Blender” DVD, which is awesome, but somehow I only feel attracted to watching your stuff here. I can’t quite find my way around on the ManCandy FAQ, either. So please, please us with more rigging and animation
@ Wes et al.: I’ll definitely need some help this year with a_complicated_rig I have and with animating it, so maybe someone here could show me via Mavenseed?
David, your tutorials are an incredible resource for the blender community. This start to finish tutorial series on the alien, have helped me in my everyday work, and more importantly have helped my 9-year old son complete his first character, rig and texture. Wow.
thank you for your kind words
i’m happy to share my knowledge, and i’m glad it’s helped you 
I am really impressed how it’s seems to be easy. I always though that actions and moves, was the most difficult parts of blender, but here well…
How can I import this kind of stuff (and use it) into the game engine?
the game engine is on my new years resolution list to learn
Oh, good, I know a guy who’s in desperate need of quality BGE tuts. You’re the man
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I am really enthusiast to see the result. More, I guess that all previous tutorials could have a elegant conclusion trough a game engine set, and could create a pretty good game at the same time. I am impatient.
PS : Maybe finally could you use the Porsche GT3 RS from Jonathan Williamson, piloted by our alien in a funny amazing game…
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IT’s just an re-edition of my first post (see below) which was not at the right place – (sorry for the double).
Very good job here. Very informative. Just one thing I noticed: You started the walk cycle on frame 1, then moved to frame 5, which is a four frame gap, then to 10, 15, and so one which are all 5 frame gaps. Not a big deal for demonstration purposes, but this were for, say, a professional production, it would be a bit more of an issue.
I’m wondering, in an upcoming tutorial, are you planing on showing how to use the walk cycle, maybe for your little alien to follow a path or something? If not, could you consider it?
-SC
“so on.” not “so one.” Sorry.
Proof reading on the internet? No way.
good point, i hadn’t thought about that.
not sure if the “follow a path” would constitute a whole new tutorial, but i’ll talk to wes about doing a “tip” over it.
heh, proofreading, who needs it? i caught a mistake myself, there on my tutorial. when i first mention the “NLA editor,” I define it as being a “non-linear animation editor.” it’s actually a “non-linear ACTION” editor
Excellent tut again Dave.
I´d love a tutotial or 2 on exporting your little alien animations to Unity 3D as a low poly animated character.
Thanks again for all the series and the cool 2.5 discovery.
Bernard
I am really enthusiast to see the result. More, I guess that all previous tutorials could have a elegant conclusion trough a game engine set, and could create a pretty good game at the same time. I am impatient.
PS : Maybe finally could you use the Porsche GT3 RS from Jonathan Williamson, piloted by our alien in a funny amazing game…
What if you were to combine a “walking along a path” tip or tutorial with a “walk cycle modifier” tutorial? Would that be enough for one full tutorial?
as mentioned above, i’ll try to make the path constraint into a little tip
wonderful…this is just what i was wondering how its done and how to go about from the first time i started to pose characters around…whenever i tried to make them walk they seemed to suffer from robotic/ idiotic movement…
thanks for making this tutoria, i think this is a very common issue that lots of users are struggling to find out about…
thumbsup and best regards!
hey I know this dosn’t have anything to do with the tutorial but all of a sudden Blender stopped working on my computer. Every time I try to open it I get a message saying that it has stopped working, and the only way I can get it to run is if I open it through the program files. Has anyone else had this problem, or do you know how I may fix it?
Dear David,
Is it possible to request a video tutorial of mesh deform modifier? So far there is no such video tutorial.
David, thanks for your tutorials. I was hoping that this one would resolve a problem with the nla in 2.5 that I’ve been having – the offset bone. When I open an old walk cycle file (from 2.49) it keeps popping back to the beginning of the cycle at the start of each step. In 2.49 you simply name an offset bone and Blender knows that the next cycle of the walk starts from that point. It isn’t clear from the video if your alien is actually moving along or is simply sliding its feet in the same place. In 2.5 I can’t find any reference to an offset bone. Can you help?
Nice series of Tutorials, i really liked it. I noticed that you had problems with the finger going through the body, the head in this case, and I was wondering if there was a way to make it so the outside of the object is hard, or solid so that, by default, no outside object can go through and penetrate the surface of the other object.
Very nice tutorial! I’ve watched just about all of them and they are great help. Maybe you can continue the animation tutorial. I’ve been able to follow along and I’ve had good progress but would like a tutorial on implementing the walk cycle. I, possibly many other, have problems getting the walk cycle to go forward via path or something of the sorts. A tutorial on getting the character to walk forward would help a lot of us!
awesome tut mr ward but i do have a question…i got 2 animations now…idle and walking…how do i mkae a scene to were he walks up..idles..and then continues walking?n e info on this would be epicly helpful
..i guess to put it simple how do i go from one animation in to the other
Is there any way to apply offset to a cycle the way I could in 2.4?