[break]The Sparkles Timeline Copy Tool for timeline ranges with the additional ability to x-mirror all poses in a given time range. The mirror copy feature naturally supports the creation of Walk Cycles.
While your armature is selected and in Pose Mode, open the Tool Shelf and locate the “Copy Timeline” section in the Sparkles Tools Panel. This panel is located in the Tools Tab (1).[break] You set the parameters (see below), then press the “Copy Timeline” Button.
Note: Once you have setup the numbers and options, you can continue working on your poses, add new ones, remove existing ones, etc. Then you can press the “Copy timeline” button repeatedly to update your walk cycle.
Add Startframe: Adds an initial key frame to the first timeframe of the copy range.
Add Endframe: Copies the Start frame of the source range to the last frame of the target range. For walk cycles this terminates the cycle correctly.
Replace: wipes the target range before the copy is done. Thus any key frame in the target range will be removed first.
x-mirror: instead of simply copying the key frames, the pose in each key frame will be mirror copied along the x-axis.
The Start is set to the startframe of the timeline.
You need two simple poses for the beginning.
The Contact Point, that is the moment where both feet are at their maximum distance.
The Passing Point, that is where both feet are closest to each other.
Place the Contact Point on Frame 0 on the Timeline and place the Passing Point at the first quarter point of the walk cycle. A complete walk cycle with Blender’s default settings takes about 40 time frames, so the first quarter point is in time frame 10.
Take care to place your initial key frame into frame 0. Otherwise you get a small stutter when the cycle switches from the last frame to the first frame.
Move the cursor in the timeline to the frame that you want to mirror.
And here is where the timeline copy tool can be a huge time saver as it can copy / mirror paste the entire timeline (or parts of it) with a few clicks.