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Ok, as requested, here's a short tutorial on how to
attach your character to a path and create some terrain.
In order to do this tutorial, you really need to
have completed the Walk Cycle Tutorial. If you don't have a completed Walk Cycle
of your own, then use this Proj:
Finished-Walk-Cycle.Max
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The first thing we need to do is increase the
length of the animation.
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Go to the
Time Configuration Dialog and change
the animation length to about 200 frames.
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Now we need to loop our walk cycle.
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Open
Track View, and set the Filters option to
Animated Tracks Only
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Now Right Click on the
Pelvis Track and Choose
Expand All
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Now holding down CTRL to select more than one
track, select all the Rotation Tracks for all your body parts, plus the
Position
Track for your Pelvis:
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Now click
Out Of Range Parameter
Curves 
and choose Cycle
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Play your Animation. The Walk cycle
should continue through the whole animation. If one of your limbs stops after
one cycle, you must have missed a track in track view. Go and correct this.
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Now create a
Spline path in the Top View
for your character to follow
Next we need to create a
Dummy
object to act as a link between our character and the path. The reason we need
to do this, is that if we were to attach our character's Pelvis (the
Root Object)
to the Path, we would need to assign a Path Controller to it's
Position Track.
This would delete the current Bezier Position Controller, which is making the
Pelvis move up and down.
So, to avoid losing that
information, we create a Dummy, assign a Path Controller to the
Dummy, and then
Link the Pelvis to the Dummy so that wherever the
Dummy goes, the Pelvis
follows. (and wherever the Pelvis goes, the rest of the body goes!)
A
Dummy object is basically an
object that exists solely for the purpose of linking to other objects. It does
not render.
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Go to
Create
Panel>Helpers>Dummy
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In the Front View, Click in the
middle of your character and drag out a Dummy Box to surround him:
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Now using the
Select and Link Tool,
Click on your Pelvis and Link it to the
Dummy.
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Now assign a
Path Controller to
your Dummy (see Lecture 9 Page 1) and choose the
Path you just created.
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Check
Follow and adjust the Axis in
the Path Parameters so that your character follows the Path. (For me it was
Y
and Flip checked).
So now our character follows a
Path, but we need some Ground for him to walk on. The best method for this is Loft, because it allows us to go back and adjust the path at any time, affecting
both the ground and the characters direction.
We need to create a shape to
extrude along the Path (this is essentially what Loft does)
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Select your
Path
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Go
Create
Panel>Geometry>Compound Objects>Loft
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Click on
Get Shape. It should turn
Green. Make sure Instance is Checked. This means that when we adjust the
original Path, the Loft
will also change.
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Now click on your
Rectangle.
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This should create the Ground.
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Now select the ground and move it
down so that your character's feet are just touching it:
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Now if you want to modify the
character's Path, Select the Spline and add an Edit Spline modifier
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Now you can manipulate the
Spline's
Verticies to change the Path as you wish.
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Be careful not to do anything too
drastic, as it will distort the ground. Too tight corners will make the ground
intersect itself.
You should end up with something
like this:
Click
to Play
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