2 characters interacting with animation

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hello! This is sorta unrelated to Unreal Engine but its about games so i figured this forum.

What is it called/Does it have a name for it where 2 characters interact with eachother with animations?
Like alot of modern games use this where you can for example grab other characters sorta.

Like having a hostage as a human shield, then one character behind grabs around the neck for example, and the character infront stumbs into a leaning back animation kinda.

Or when you for example Assasinate a character from behind
Or how the Jockey sits on a characters shoulder in Left 4 Dead

I dont know how to explain but if anyone readin this awful description understand what i mean, do you know if there is a name or something for this? So i know what to google on?

Thanks! :stuck_out_tongue:

2

I don’t think there’s a specific name for it. Now, I am not an animator, but after having fiddled around with UE4’s animation system for quite a while, I think they simply just activate the animations on both interacting characters at the same time (since each character only holds its own skeleton in an animation blueprint, you cannot really have unrelated character “share” an animation otherwise). That would at least be the simplest implementation.

Then again, my experience is mostly UE4, so I wouldn’t know how other engines take care of it.