wk_PowerPin

-> Tested with Blender 5.2!

When animating characters with WalkCycles and let the characters walk around curves, it's very likely the feet slide more or less during turning.

wk_PowerPin automates the process of pinning down feet when they reach local Z=0 (or whatever axis you define as "up").

Even if you let your character walk up a hill, as long as you move the character's global controller, the feet will still have a local zero position during feet-down.

Just pick the character's armature as reference and the feet as targets. set start and end frame, back step and hit "Bake".

In Non-Destructive mode, PowerPin will key all pinning-animation in a NLA strip and adds it in the NLA editor. It's easy to do changes in your walk animation: Just delete the new NLA strip, edit your animation, bake the feet again.

How It Works

You pick a Reference (usually the armature or a control object that defines the local up axis) and one or more Target feet/bones. wk_PowerPin finds ground-contact segments (local axis near the Ground Value within Tolerance), creates a Combine overlay action, and pins the foot across each segment. Outside contact frames, nothing is keyed.

Key Features

Automatically pins feet in global position during ground contact (e.g. z=0)

Set tolerance, in case your walk cycle animation doesn't have precise flat ground-keys

Set start and end frame for frame range to bake

Trim the baked segments: If your walk cycle animation has keys close to the ground frames, the pinned animation might cause jumps from pinned range back to original animation. Stealing a frame or two might end up in smoother transitions.

Chose between non-distructive mode (adding a NLA strip) or destructive mode (baking the pinning directly into your f-curves).

Typical Workflow

1. Select your Reference (armature) and Targets (feet).

2. Pick Axis, set Ground Value (0.0 for most rigs), adjust Tolerance if needed.

3. Define Frame Range and Bake Step.

4. If you see pops at contact boundaries, set Trim Contact Range (e.g., Start=1, End=1).

5. Click Bake. Base action is pushed to NLA if needed; a Combine overlay is created and pinned per contact.

Un-Push Action:

Accidentally pushed an Action to the NLA — or simply want it back?

Un-Push Action restores the selected NLA Strip’s Action as the active Action, ready for normal editing in the Dope Sheet and Graph Editor. No baking, no resampling, and no additional keyframes — your original F-Curves and keys stay intact.

A simple counterpart to Blender’s Push Down Action.

Info:

This addon works stand-alone. If you've own wk_tools already, wk_PowerPin addon integrates seamlessly to your wk_tools side panel.