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Can you have a pre-animted character interact or be aware of its invironment and adjust accordingly?

Development Discussion Animation
#1

Hi guys,

In most games you come up to a book object.
You press “E” and you pick it up.

If you play in the third person and you want to stop your character somewhere near the book
and then press “E” and then have it “adjust its animation” (like leaning in little further) so it would actually
pick it up in the play of the animation. In other words its aware of where it is in relation to the book.
Its not just going through the pre-animated motions.
In other words the character have to actually “think” how to pick it up if its standing a little too far away from it.

Can this be done and how would one approach this setup?

Thank you :slight_smile:

#2

Yes, you can. Look up ‘UE4 additive animations’ on Google and you’ll find the documentation. Or you could just do the animations from scratch. All you would really need for that is the lean anyway as it works just like an aim offset. So you could just do the end pose and blend it with whatever else the player is doing.

#3

So you want to use 1 pickup animation which should be deformed to the position of the book? -> you could do that with an IK setup: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Animation/IKSetups/index.html :slight_smile:

#4

O.k. thanks guys for the responses I will check them out.

#5

I was thinking about doing this myself. I’d have a blend space animation for my character sticking out their arm in all different directions similar to how there are aim offset blend spaces. I’d also use an IK setup to really make sure the hand reaches in the exact location I need it to. The reason for the blend space is so I can animate the torso and shoulders in the correct orientations depending on the direction the arm is sticking out. It’s one thing to use an IK set up to move the hand. It’s another to also make the whole body move properly and lean a little, and for that I’d use the blend space.

#6

Yeah I just wonder why I dont see this in Blackllight Retribution which runs on Unreal 3.
It looks like they had to strip a lot out of that game to make it run fast enough.
A lot of things can be done but at what cost I wonder … :slight_smile: