The topics in this section deal with the editing of footstep motion when animating bipeds.
After you've created footsteps, there are several ways to edit their placement in the scene.
You can edit footstep timing in Track View.
One of the most powerful features of footsteps is the ability to adapt keyframes automatically to edits you make to your footstep pattern. By analogy, the footsteps become a kind of gizmo for manipulating the keyframes of your character's animation. In most cases, edits you make to footsteps act upon your keys in an intuitive fashion.
You can copy the motion of a biped footstep sequence, and paste it either at the end or into the middle of another footstep sequence. This technique is called splicing.
When you activate footsteps, keys are created for the legs and feet according to the footstep pattern and timing. Leg and foot keys are set at each Touch and Lift frame, and between footsteps.
When you use footsteps to animate the legs and feet, animating the spine, neck, head, arms, and other upper body parts is accomplished in the same way as for freeform animation. Simply turn on Auto Key and start moving and rotating body parts. See Animating by Moving Links and Animating by Rotating Links.
When you activate footsteps, keys are created for biped body parts. After activating footsteps, you can also create keys by turning on Auto Key and animating body parts. All these keys can be viewed in Track View – Dope Sheet mode.
After footsteps are activated, you can adjust the biped's overall balance.
A ballistic gait is any footstep pattern in which there are periods with no feet on the ground, causing the biped to become airborne, or ballistic. Running and jumping are ballistic gaits, while walking is not.
After you have animated the biped with footsteps, you can save the data in either a BIP file or an STP file.
