Character Locomotion / Animation system progress

[c.longmire42]

Hey!

Just showing off some progress I've made on my character locomotion system. Feedback wanted!

Thanks!

[kamrann]

Don't really know anything about the animation side of things so can't give much feedback, but it looks pretty sweet to me. Will be interested to see how it looks when you add full on-the-spot turning animations, and how you go about blending between those and the leaning effect, for when the character is changing direction whilst moving with a small but not insignificant linear speed.

[s33k3rgr]

Brilliant, you could make a series of tutorials on this.

[n00854180t]

That looks quite smooth - once you add in the turn on the spot animations for fast turns, it will be pretty close to the movement animation seen in games like Assassin's Creed.

[c.longmire42]

Games like assassins creed use tech like motion graphs, and complex ways of handling animation that UE4 does not have. Motion graphs can store tons of mocap data and make blending and transitions look great, while UE4 only has state machines and blend graphs. Motion fields also slightly limit control responsiveness, and trade that for visual quality. Im trying to make a system that looks good, but also allows for the most amount of player control in terms of movement. The player input is tied directly to capsule movement, and the animations are basically determined by how the capsule is moving. This is different from when input controls the animation, which then in turn controls how the capsule moves.

[c.longmire42]

Brilliant, you could make a series of tutorials on this.

I did show off and explain most of my blueprints, so you could pause the video and copy them if you want.

[n00854180t]

Games like assassins creed use tech like motion graphs, and complex ways of handling animation that UE4 does not have. Motion graphs can store tons of mocap data and make blending and transitions look great, while UE4 only has state machines and blend graphs. Motion fields also slightly limit control responsiveness, and trade that for visual quality. Im trying to make a system that looks good, but also allows for the most amount of player control in terms of movement. The player input is tied directly to capsule movement, and the animations are basically determined by how the capsule is moving. This is different from when input controls the animation, which then in turn controls how the capsule moves.

Hah yeah, I'm aware of that I just meant that your system will be visually similar to the quality of those games

[c.longmire42]

Hah yeah, I'm aware of that I just meant that your system will be visually similar to the quality of those games

Oh gosh I dunno...hopefully! Im just a self taught animator and very new to this. I also cant program, so some stuff is hard to do. But thanks for the feedback!

[ZacD]

You need some hip and shoulder movement, that'll fix most of the stiffness.

[Xodroc]

I like it for sure, what are you planning to add next? You did not have IK setup yet correct? Would love to see that character smoothly going up a stairs or something. Regarding facing the same direction as the camera, instead of turning right away when standing still, you could have the character look around and only turn if you move the camera far enough. Same goes for when you look down at the ground or up in the sky, you could have the character's head or entire upper torso bend accordingly. Comes down to personal preference though I suppose.

Hadn't thought about a Flash game, but this certainly makes the idea more appealing. I assume you've probably already seen and were perhaps inspired by the procedural animation techniques used in Overgrowth by Wolfire games?

Awesome work overall!

[c.longmire42]

I like it for sure, what are you planning to add next? You did not have IK setup yet correct? Would love to see that character smoothly going up a stairs or something. Regarding facing the same direction as the camera, instead of turning right away when standing still, you could have the character look around and only turn if you move the camera far enough. Same goes for when you look down at the ground or up in the sky, you could have the character's head or entire upper torso bend accordingly. Comes down to personal preference though I suppose.

Hadn't thought about a Flash game, but this certainly makes the idea more appealing. I assume you've probably already seen and were perhaps inspired by the procedural animation techniques used in Overgrowth by Wolfire games?

Awesome work overall!

Haha oh yeah Ive definitely seen that video, however I chose to use full animation cycles instead of poses so I have more control over the look. I also do plan on making aim offsets for the head and torso, and only rotation after a certain point like you said, however Im not a programmer so some things are tricky to me. Same with the foot IK. Id love to get help from the community to improve this system though!

[Xodroc]

Haha oh yeah Ive definitely seen that video, however I chose to use full animation cycles instead of poses so I have more control over the look. I also do plan on making aim offsets for the head and torso, and only rotation after a certain point like you said, however Im not a programmer so some things are tricky to me. Same with the foot IK. Id love to get help from the community to improve this system though!

I know the feeling. The Couch Knights demo may be worth studying if you can reverse engineer what they did for the Oculus controlled characters, I believe they use head and spine IK with a IK "look at" following the HMD rotation but I could be mistaken. The VR Template in the forums also might be useful to look at. They call that kind of standing still and looking around "Tank mode" but from the looks of it, they detached the head from the model and used aim offset just for the head (only while an HMD is in use, not with mouse input).

Wish I could help, just been focusing on landscape with too little time.