It then processes this data and uses the formular/cheat sheet I picked up during my time at the Games Academy from my animation teacher (see pic for more info) to key the entire rig on every third frame, starting at 1, to create a sandbox walkcycle. These fields are used to find out information about the rig – for example, what the ctrl names are, what their rotation axis is, and on which axis you would like the rig to move forward, as well as the actual rotation & translation Value. Each of these boxes have tx & float fields which have to be filled in. Nils Diefenbach on his script says about it: “It creates 3 dialogue boxes. All you need to do is enter the ctrl names, define axis of rotation & movement and the scripts sets up a sandboxed walkcycle that features cycled curves for all axis in every control from the feet all the way up to the head! All you need to do now is use the scale & move tools of the graph editor to work with the curves and create a unique and great animation! This version has been tested with Maya version 2k11 & 2k12 – but should work with older versions as well. This script creates a sandbox walkcycle with just a few clicks. Check out the AutoWalk a Sandbox WalkCycle Script for Maya here.

The script provides some dialog boxes to find out about the rig in use and creates a basic walk cycle based on that input that is a quick and great starting point for animation. Nils Diefenbach posts a script for Maya that he has been working on called, AutoWalk which will create a walk cycle in just a few clicks.

Maya walk cycle