How do you make an alice person character walk

Ok, first of all, i downloaded this program after reading Randy Pausch's last lecture (which im sure millions have). I am an artist and i am hoping to go into programming and animation (movies, videogames, applications, tv) and character design, so i thought i would start with alice. alas i have already met a problem though. I cant figure out how to make a person realistically walk. When i choose move, the figure obviously just literally moves forward with no bodily motion (legs and arms and torso dont shift or even move a little) i understand this is to be expected, so i tried using the roll and turn and what not, but every time i try to roll the leg, it only lets me go left or right in rotation to the direction the torso is facing. i want know how to tilt the leg forward (foot towards the camera) to make like a rudementary walk. even if it ends up looking like a basic nazi march walk at least ive accomplished a short term goal. i refuse to just drop this even if it seems stupid and simple to an advanced programmer. sorry if there are any spelling errors, and i also apologize ahead of time if i am missing something obvious, i am a noob after all.

thank you to anyone who can help me with this issue, i really am very determined to make this work


EDIT: Wow, thank you so much rocky, Jim, and rich, it is 11:22 where i am and i have just made a man run, even better i have made him run in slow motion (on purpose) towards the camera, much like a bay watch scene, and it stops with his shins in the camera, my next goal is to make him stop just short enough so that you can see his entire figure, and then i want him to flex. i am making it to show my girlfriend more than anything and i think it will make her giggle.
after that i intend to try and make a simple side scrolling hurdle jumping game where you have to use this guy to jump hurdles.
if i need more assistance i will return to yall.
thank you so much i am so proud of my self, even if it was the simplest task, as this is the first work i have ever done with alice or any programming for that matter.
thank you again i cant say it enough.

Originally Posted by eastondowdy

Ok, first of all, i downloaded this program after reading Randy Pausch's last lecture (which im sure millions have). I am an artist and i am hoping to go into programming and animation (movies, videogames, applications, tv) and character design, so i thought i would start with alice. alas i have already met a problem though. I cant figure out how to make a person realistically walk. When i choose move, the figure obviously just literally moves forward with no bodily motion (legs and arms and torso dont shift or even move a little) i understand this is to be expected, so i tried using the roll and turn and what not, but every time i try to roll the leg, it only lets me go left or right in rotation to the direction the torso is facing. i want know how to tilt the leg forward (foot towards the camera) to make like a rudementary walk. even if it ends up looking like a basic nazi march walk at least ive accomplished a short term goal. i refuse to just drop this even if it seems stupid and simple to an advanced programmer. sorry if there are any spelling errors, and i also apologize ahead of time if i am missing something obvious, i am a noob after all.

thank you to anyone who can help me with this issue, i really am very determined to make this work

I believe I have don this in a world of mine before... I usually stand up (in real life) and determine the simple movments required (I also experiment with smaller rotations such as 0.12 or 0.06) Im headed to my old cpu tomorrow mabe I still have it

ok but i mean is there a specific code method that i can use to get the mans leg to tilt and his knee to bend so that he can lean forward and take a step and then continue on with the other leg in a similar yet mirrorred fashion.

p.s. i just experimented with it a little and i can pose the guy to look like he is taking a step before giving him any commands by going into the add object editing window on the man and tiltin and tumbling the objects individual parts (leg sections) but i dont think this will carry over to when i make him move, other than going frame by frame which defeats the purpose of creating the world.

There are as many ways to do this as there are for people to actually walk. This is one of the classic animation challenges - there really isn't a single solution. I would suggest that, as a start, you look at the following:

1. Walk methods associated with characters from "hebuilder" and "shebuilder". These are "pose" based. (Alice quite smoothly handles the move from one pose to the next - i.e., the "tweening.")
2. The walk method associate with the MadScientist." This uses the various turn, roll and move commands.

Also the Alice 2.2 beta gallery has a complete folder of walking characters that work in Alice 2.0.

[rich0e0rick]

you should also make sure you pick objects with leg parts, knees parts, and hopefully foot parts, since this gives you greater range of possibilities. that might be why it looks like a nazi walk lol... just play around and remember that you always get better results with hard work.
note: you most likely will be using the turn (forward/backward) option, not the roll option as you stated above.

rick