Walk Cycle vs. Leg Work

[mikematthews14]

So, I'm currently reading "The Animator's Survival Kit" and I've come across a section in which I don't know whether to take his advice or not. He says "Don't try to work out a cycle walking in place with the feet sliding back" and I know that he is talking mostly about traditional animation but I just wanted to hear peoples views on this. I have always used walk cycles and found that it would usually prove to be a pain in the arse(especially using the trax editor).

Also, something else that has always plagued me:

When animating a character, would you move the character's master control with him or leave it behind and walk away from it? It tends to cause a few issues with my animation and it'd be great to hear some views on this.

[joojaa]

When animating a character, would you move the character's master control
with him or leave it behind and walk away from it?

Or alternatively rig so thet the master controll follows the center of your gravity. By making the master controll part of the same node.

[pacificnil]

Hey............leave the master behind and progress away.

[sebastien-lepine]

In my experience, it has always been better in the long haul to animate your character forward. like a person would walk in real life, the reason being is that if you animate a shot in which your character is required to walk and then come to a stop, you can simply scale your forwards translation curves to make him stop. If you treadmill your character, it will be much more difficult to get him to stop, you will have to either counter animate or make up a system of locator constraints.

As for the master control, its better to leave it at 0,0. Most rigs will provide you with a pelvis control which is grouped under the master and that is the one you want to use to move your character around. Another strike against treadmilling which pretty much forces you to animate the master control.

[orangepita]

Ok so if I animate the character going across the screen instead of on the spot, what if I need it to run on the spot (CYCLE) now, is it as easy as translating the poses back to where the first pose was? (ie. perhaps over the origin?)

And if so, would i need to tweak? (the section in the Animators kit seems to imply that you should animate it across the screen, and then "figure out a cycle"? But if you just translate poses back, there's nothing really to figure out right? I know the book applies more to 2D..)

Also, is this true for both runs and walks? Do the run across the screen (2 steps), and then translate the poses back?