Flash IK – Bones tool walk sequence – source
Since my Adobe TV Flash Downunder episode on Inverse Kinematics in Flash using the bones tool, I have received a lot of requests for some sample files. So while building a longer example (to come later) I decided to upload the source for a simple walk sequence.
The cool thing about this sequence is that it uses only 5 key frames ( the 5th being a repeat of the 1st). Another trick in the walk sequence to control the vertical movement of the body during walking is to use a hidden object to be the base of the whole armature. This is a trick I learnt from Tony Mowatt from the Flash Product team. Tony is largely responsible for IK in Flash CS4 and he is an all-round nice guy and cool dude! Hopefully I will be able share some more of Tony’s work in the future as he has created some awesome IK examples.
Feel free to download the walk_sequence.fla file… and if you create some cool IK samples using it, please let me know so I can point to them. Happy IK-ing!
Oh… almost forgot to mention.. Jason wrote a really cool blog today on Multichannel Audio Editing in Soundbooth CS4… well worth a read!
Walk Sequence
Tags: Bones Tool, Flash CS4, Inverse Kinematics
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 am
Hi,
nice job. I’ve got a question about ik and bone : is that impossible to scale the bone base in a shape to make it easy to drag ?
Greetings
February 2nd, 2009 at 9:10 am
Hey there
I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘scale the bone base’? Sometimes selecting a specific bone to move can be difficult if they are small, however if you select any bone in the armature you can use the arrows in the properties panel to jump to parent and child bones and also siblings. Hope this helps…
February 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 am
ok thanks. Indeed i was talking about the selection and its area. So the selected area can’t be modified(enlarged would be great within a shape) !?
April 1st, 2009 at 8:54 am
Hey there Paul,
I have shared this file and your Adobe TV tutorial with my classes at the Academy of Art here in San Francisco. I teach Flash but had no experience (until just recently) with IK or the Bones tool and am more of a Designer/Developer than a character animator so I’ve been looking for any help I can get for my students in this regard (we do a really fun story project with always great results)…anyway! I had trouble explaining the post part of the IK (where the bones tool starts on the black box). Could you describe what that’s doing? There’s is a basic understanding I believe I’m missing here.
By the way, your video tutorials for this tool are better than most of what’s out there (that I’ve seen)–though I did have a laugh with my students that you have to suspect a tool that everyone uses the same Crane to demo! (I’ve seen four demos of this tool all using that same Crane!). But you included the shape option for the Bones tool, some info about the Bind tool and now this great walk cycle. So thanks!
April 1st, 2009 at 9:29 am
Hi Liza
Thanks for your comments, and yes, we have overused the Crane demo! … I am building some more examples at the moment and will share with you soon.
The reason for using the invisible ‘black box’ is that as a person walks they almost ‘bounce’ up and down. The invisible black box allows me to control the up and down movement of the body as a whole (you could also use it to control forward movement). After building a number of IK armatures, I have found that I am using this invisible box idea a lot. It seems to be a good way of controlling the armatures as a whole. Hope this helps.
Stay tuned for some more demos and example files soon!
October 14th, 2009 at 4:32 am
Hey just wanted to say thanks for letting us download this, saved me a lot of time! :)
May 31st, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Thankyou for sharing your source file. I plan to share this with my class to demonstrate the walk cycle using the Bone Tool. A picture says a thousand words.