2009

Activation/Deactivation Workflow

The fastest workflow with footsteps is to deactivate footsteps and make

changes, reactivate footsteps and play the animation to check your work, and

repeat this process until the footstep timing and placement are correct.

However, deactivating and reactivating footsteps replaces any biped keys with

the default animation for the current footstep pattern and timing.

For this reason, it is recommended that you work with footsteps exclusively

first, ignoring the upper body animation, and deactivate and reactivate

footsteps as needed. When the motion of the feet is perfect or near-perfect,

only then should you adjust the biped animation manually. Otherwise, you

will lose all your manual animation work every time you deactivate and

reactivate footsteps.

TIP Alternatively, you can use layers on page 4403 to store any upper body

animations you want to preserve while you proceed with changes in your biped's

footsteps.

Rules for Inactive Footsteps

When you click deactivate footsteps, only selected footsteps are deactivated.

If you haven't made any changes to the default animation, it is recommended

that you deactivate all footsteps. However, if you've changed or added

animation keys to part of the animation, you might want to deactivate only

a portion of the footsteps.

When some but not all footsteps are currently deactivated, limitations are

imposed on the changes you can make to footsteps:

■ You cannot set, delete, move, or edit keys in any way; footstep tracks are

disabled in the Dope Sheet.

■ You can create footsteps only when the new footsteps are among and

adjacent to existing inactive footsteps.

■ You can delete only inactive footsteps, and at least one inactive footstep

must remain.

■ You cannot deactivate a set of nonsequential footsteps.