Distance Matching Locomotion : Giving it a shot!

Development Character & Animation
337

So I’ve been working on this the last week for our project and I’m using @ 's Distance Matching plugin in addition to the open source Custom Anim Node plugin for Speed/Orientation warping. I’ve watched [Nucl.ai 2016] Bringing a Hero from Paragon to Life with UE4 - YouTube so many times at this point and I feel like I have a good understanding of everything expect the jumps. I’m having trouble translating what he is saying into how they use the values of the anim curves for their jumping animations.

For example:

Take off:

  • What I know: They do distance matching from the take off marker. The animation has a DistanceCurve from 0 to 116.267 which I use to synchronize the frame position based on the distance (height) from the takeoff marker using the DistanceMatching node (makes sense).
  • What I don’t know: How they determine compression of the mesh for a few frames to keep the feet on the ground. There’s also a DistanceToApex curve from 0 to -5.222 which I don’t know what is used for.

Apex:

  • What I know: They time synchronize then time stretch.
  • What I don’t know: There is a DistanceCurve and a DistanceToApex curve that are both -1.658 to 20.292. I’m not sure how to use these to accomplish time synchronization since those curves don’t seem to reflect time based values. Nor do I know how they calculate the time stretching to feed into the apex animation’s play rate.

Landing:

  • What I know: They do distance synchronization to the predicted landing marker to determine when to start the landing animation. The animation has a DistanceCurve from -93.636 to 0 which I use to synchronize the frame position based on the distance (height) from the landing marker using the DistanceMatching node (makes sense).
  • What I don’t know: There is a DistanceToApex curve from 30.067 to 0 which I don’t know what is used for.

So I’m really mostly struggling with the apex animation, and the usage of the DistanceToApex curves. I’m using the Paragon Wraith animations if anyone is wondering. By the way, really cool thread here and lots of really knowledgeable and helpful people!