All images from Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide by Kelly L. Murdock.

This is the next in a new series of excerpts from the Thomson Course Technology book Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide. In the next few months, VFXWorld readers will develop the skills needed to create, render and animate scenes and projects using the amazing tools offered by Poser 7. We will offer step-by-step tutorials for each task, followed by projects that allow readers to apply each new skill.

What You’ll Do
In this lesson, you learn how to animate a walk cycle using the Walk Designer.

Once you’ve learned to create manual keyframes, try to create the keys to make a figure walk realistically across the floor. Although the keys involved in making a figure walk might seem rather simple, it is actually quite difficult to realistically create a walk cycle using manual keyframes. Poser includes an interface called the Walk Designer that can automatically create a walk cycle for the current figure.

[Figure 1] Default walk path.

Creating a Walk Path
Before you can use the Walk Designer, you need to create a Walk Path, which tells the current figure where to walk. To create a Walk Path, select the Figure, Create Walk Path menu command and the default walk path appears in the scene extending from the default figure, as shown in Figure 1. You can select this path from the Props submenu in the Actor List and is called Path_1.

Editing a Walk Path
Along the walk path are several control points that look like simple dots. By dragging these control points, you can edit the shape of the walk path. If you click the walk path, you can add new control points to the walk path. You can delete control points by holding down the Alt/Option key and clicking the control point.

Using the Walk Designer
Once you create a walk path, you can use the Walk Designer, shown in Figure 2, to set the parameters for the walk cycle. You open the Walk Designer dialog box by using the Window, Walk Designer menu command. To the left of the Walk Designer dialog box is a preview pane that will show a preview of the current walk settings when you click the Walk button. The 3/4, Side, Front and Top options change the view in the preview pane and the Figure Type button lets you open a different character file.

Editing the Walk Cycle
You can use all of the settings in the Blend Styles and Tweaks sections to customize the look of your walk. The Blend Styles settings control the different types of walks such as power walk, run, sexy walk, shuffle, sneak and strut. The Tweaks settings control how the head, arms, hips and stride are set. The Defaults button resets all settings to their original positions. Saving and Loading Custom Walks If you create a custom walk cycle that you want to remember, you can use the Save button. The Save button opens a file dialog box where you can save the custom walk cycle. Walk cycles are saved as files with the .PWK extension. You can reload these files into the Walk Designer using the Load button.