This week we will be adding offset and overlap to the horse animation, and moving it forwards along a ground plane. We will also be discussing our ideas for extending the animation.

• Horse going from trot to canter with gait change
• Horse going from trot to walk with gait change
• use reference, analyze it, and interpret as necessary to get a believable performance 

Copy the up and down translation from the COG_CTRL to the hips rearTORSO_CTRL and chest frontTORSO_CTRL. Make sure you past it relative to the value at frame 1. In my case it was -.823. You can save a key for the y tran on frame 1, and type in the value in the stats window in the graph editor.

Now when you paste the curve, it will past it relative to this value, instead of pasting it beginning at the default value of 0.

The chest is carryng the weight of the head and neck, so scale down the amount of up and down translation in the chest, compared to the hips.

Using the graph editor, add overlap to the action. Grab the chest, front feet and leg controllers, head and neck controllers and slide the animation 2 frames later. Grab just the neck and head, and finish offsetting the animation in overlapping waves from the base of the neck to the head.

Now using the compress fetlock controller, add the sense of weight being compressed into the hoof as the weight goes onto each foot.

Add some side movement to the feet. Look at reference closely from the front and back views.

Double check that the feet are moving in equal increments along the ground.

Using the method demonstrated in class, move the horse forwards along a ground plane.

• make sure the feet are moving back in even increments
• move the cycle forwards along a ground plane

Take your trot cycle, and move it forwards. Create a simple render of your animation with the horse trotting forwards, on a ground plane with a shadow to show the foot contact. Add several behaviors to break up the cycle and add spirit to the horse animation.

Examples:

• add a kick
• head tosses
• looking to the left and right
• tail flick

Put the rendered movie file in the drop off folder for the beginning of next week's class. Your animation should be between 80 to 120 frames in length.