Animating Max: Creating his Walk Cycle

  One last step and Max will be finally ready to be integrated in Max Proof.  This last step is Animating Max. My goal is to create a walk cycle for him so when we throw him in the game, we can at least have a working AI. The method I used for creating his Walk cycle is actually the second time I've used this which is using the CAT Motion Editor

  The CAT Motion Editor is a great way to edit animations. To begin creating Max walking what I did was go to the motion tab and while on there click the CAT Parent object in the scene. This brings you to the animation properties. While in the properties I added a CAT Motion Layer and toggled the animation mode to play which in turn, assuming I have an animation would allow me to now officially play it. Having the CAT Motion layer added in I hit the CAT Motion Editor and open the character walk animation. With the character walk animation added into the layer I was now able to see Max walking however it wasn't pleasing. The reason being is because Max's arms were bending and twisting to much as well as the body. Considering Max is a baby, my goal was to make the walk animation as if it was really a toddler walking. Still in the editor, I begun going to different groups such as RibcageGroup >  Arms > Bend or PelvisGroup > Pelvis > Twist and messing with the parameters. While changing the parameters I made sure to have the animation playing to see how the parameters would effect Max's walk cycle.

  I did this for quite a bit, maybe an hour or two honestly only because the original walk cycle had so much twisting and bending occurring. On top of that when it came to animating Max and messing with the animation parameters in the CAT Motion Editor, I was able to truly see what part's of the body were stretching. After seeing, I would have to go back to skinning and re adjusting weights on bones. Eventually on though, I was able to get Max walking without any stretching occurring. And man must I say, I feel accomplish! After completing Max's animation I was ready to export him so that we can integrate him in our game. To do this simply, I went to File > Export after giving the export a file name in the presets, I checked on Smoothing groups, Converting Deforming Dummies to Bones, Checked Animation on and set the walk cycle to the key length of the animation. Now some may be wondering why I set converting deforming dummies to bones and well when it came to importing to Unreal Engine 4 I ran into the issue where the bones would actually fuse with the mesh to where it actually shows in game. Going back to 3ds Max and setting converting deforming dummies to bones actually allowed me to export and import perfectly with no problems. That being said hope you guys enjoy the model and animation!!