So, you want to animate characters that will fit into a game environment or you just want to make a 3D character walk? That's good, you've taken the first step. Now you need a 3d package. This tutorial is based on Character Studio, a plugin for 3ds Max, so break it out. It's one of the 2 big packages most gaming companies use. (The other being Maya)

This tutorial is for beginners and experts alike. It's goal is to make you familiar with the tools that make Character Studio a worth while animation package, as well as teach you a quick and easy formula for a walk cycle. Animating for interactive entertainment is a much different ballgame than animating for TV, film, or any rendered motion. In most cases, your character's actual movement is done by a programmer using a bounding box, so as the animator, you have to take this into account. Only during non-interactive moments will the animator actually move the character beyond the limits of the bounding box. For example, when you create a run cycle, you not only have to worry about making him look good running in place without breaking the confines of the bounding box, but also the speed of his run has to match up with the gameplay, and it still needs to look good!

For this tutorial, we don't need a mesh to attach to the bones, we'll just animate the default setup of the Biped. If you currently have a character physiqued and ready to animate using Character Studio, feel free to open it up and work with that. I'll explain what a physique is in a future tutorial. (Character rigging…. Fun stuff)

To begin, under the file menu at the top left of your screen, reset and open up a new scene file. Select your creations tab on your right and choose your systems panel for display. Under object type, click on Biped. Now when you click and drag up in any viewport (it's best to use the front viewport) you will be creating your bone structure.

Before you start animating, turn on your animate button. Once it's red, you're ready to animate. Also, we'll need to set the length of the animation. Click on the Time Configuration button on the lower right of your screen. Set the frame rate to NTSC (30 fps), the start time to 0 and end time to 24. Click ok. Some game engines will ask for a lower frame rate, but most modern ones will accept 30fps… So if you can, use it.

With any bone or bones selected in the biped, choose your motion tab on the right. It's the one that looks like a wheel in motion. You will find most of the controls you'll need for animation here. First, make sure you are in figure mode. Figure mode is the button that looks like a stick figure (the blue button in the screen below). When in Figure mode, you set up a character to fit a mesh. Right now, we'll just use it to place his feet on the ground. In the track selection rollout, click on the arrows pointing vertical. This will select his center of mass and the move tool for you as well as constrain his movement to the vertical (Z axis). By the way, the horizontal arrow and the circular arrow are both selectors for his center of mass. Now, preferably in a side view, move the biped up so the bottom of his feet rest at 0 on the Z (the large black line defining the center of the world)

The location 0 on Z is usually an easy location to imagine the ground plane in a game engine. As long as you treat 0 on Z as the ground when you're placing his feet, he'll always look planted and standing on the ground.

Before you continue, exit figure mode. Now since we're doing a walk cycle, we'll need to IK blend the feet to world space. This prevents the feet from moving when the characters center of mass moves. Choose either foot. Now in the IK Key Info rollout, set a sliding key. This foot is now bound. To quickly choose the opposite foot, click on the Opposite button in the Track Selection rollout. Now set a sliding key for this foot as well.