Is there anyone who has been able to succesfully loop a walk cycle in houdini,i think houdinis was made for dyunamics and not characters…..looping a walk cycle is childs play in max,maya,carrara,softimage….e.t.c….but in houdini i cant seem to find a way to do it,…the cycle with offset in chops,will start giving you very weird results afte three or more iterations…..houdini is so good,apart from this issue,im pleading,guyz……is there sonethin im misssing?,is there anyone here who has or can think of a way to make a walk cycle in houdini?

what kind of wierd results you get? can you post an example ?

Il try upload a series of pics,but with other apps(maya,max,softimage,carrar)the whole animation is repeated like a block,but with houdini every single chanel is looped individually,what this results in is,if there is any difference between the object positoins relative to each other at the start of the loop and a the end of the loop,this difference increases,and increases an increases with each consecutive loop

Ok to put in in a simpke way,dont even make a compkex rig….just insert a box and a sphere,….make sure they start at the same point….then animate them to reach point b,but making sure the sphere is a little bit infront of the box…..now make this into a clip,and loop it…the little negligible sapce will increase with everey consecutive loop,……..now from a character rig point of view,this just means ,disatnce between ur targets will be gradually increasing,until your character is doing real bizzare stuff

I am not sure what do You mean by ‘making it into a clip’. Simple example of your setup might help.

With MotionFX looping an animation is really just a couple of clicks.
Here is an example:
http://kinnabari.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/walk_cycle.zip [kinnabari.googlecode.com]
Note that there are some extra Channel and Composite nodes in CHOP, you probably don't need any of those - this is related to my weight capture setup.

thexon
Ok to put in in a simpke way,dont even make a compkex rig….just insert a box and a sphere,….make sure they start at the same point….then animate them to reach point b,but making sure the sphere is a little bit infront of the box…..now make this into a clip,and loop it…the little negligible sapce will increase with everey consecutive loop,……..now from a character rig point of view,this just means ,disatnce between ur targets will be gradually increasing,until your character is doing real bizzare stuff

In your example:
When two things start at the same point but end at different points relative to each other after undergoing some motion, how can this be made into a cycle? Cycles can be made when everything returns to the same relative position. Am I missing something?

Ok,is there anyone here who has ever made a loop,using any other software?…..in maya,or max,or xsi,or carara,or daz,or poser…..what you specify as the cycle will be looped regardless os wether the relative positions are not exactly the same in your start and end……(it is imposibl to make them exactly the same anyeay)

Ok, there are two looping behaviors in Houdini both in CHOPs and Channel Editor: Cycles and Cycles with Offset. The first one seems to be doing what you're asking for, second one accumulates looped values. If you intend to make a walk cycle, why you use second one, not the first one?

You have quite an intuition though, Houdini is unfortunately hardly used for character animation. It's a pity, as it has 90% of *everything* needed to be perfect animation package. Missing 10% can't be made without constant feedback from some decent amount of pro users. Despite that I know a couple of riggers loving Houdini. Not that I know such animators though…

Oh, btw you actually made Kim Davidson talk to the forum, I'm kind of jealous! Hello Kim, remember me? ops:

hi thexon ,

i have never used any of softwares you mention , but i can testify that i have always found at least a way to correctly loop animations in any software which had ‘ a timeline ’ .

everyone knows that houdini is a ‘ non-conventinal weapon ’ .
but if you post an example or at least a screenshot of your case , im sure you 'd get the help you need from many good people here .


indeed , several solutions .

.. and pretty quickly too ( since Kim himself descended in this very topic ) .