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Learning game animations... When making player movement blend space,Root Motion vs In-place?

Development Discussion Animation
#1

Hi folks. Title kind of says it all. I am still learning about the more complex styles of player character animation. I’ve got to grips with simpler stuff like making a bird animated flying around etc. And also made some quite complex characters in Unity some years ago. (I used both Root and inplace there but never really got to grips with Root Motion).

Many example animation packs I download/see use root motion.

So if I am to try make a high quality game, something like a FPS like Counter Strike (but also with a Third Person camera mode available), would you advise root motion ?

And if so, would you completely create your own in a Maya style animation-builder, or would u source Mo-cap and perhaps edit that ?

If you don’t use Root motion, then do u control the playback speed of the anims via the velocity of the game character, or the input from gamepad , or what?

Thanks for any and all help

#2

So the basics.

In-place animation is reactive as to state changes passed to the animation BP via way of the movement component so the player model is not being moved based on the applied animation but rather moving along with the collision capsule based on the input from the input table.

Root motion is event driven meaning that the movement controller is applied directly from the input table as a means to activate the movement.

The upside of RM is since the animation variables like translation, rotation, and velocity is contained with in the animation data so the fidelity of the animation is equal to any and all animations used in other forms of visual media that is not video game related. The biggest example as to the difference between RM and inplace is since the data is contained with in the animation set human based movement dynamics can be easily calculated as well as better in world interaction using motion matching.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KSTn3ePDt50
The downside it’s easier to say that there is no or limited replication functionality as a derivative of the movement component using RM
so…

So if I am to try make a high quality game, something like a FPS like Counter Strike (but also with a Third Person camera mode available), would you advise root motion ?

RM is not recommended if network functionality is required in FPS game types such as CS.

If you don’t use Root motion, then do u control the playback speed of the anims via the velocity of the game character, or the input from gamepad , or what?

As I mentioned in-place is reactive and there is in general a function that will translate the current movement component state into something useful with in the animation BP so you can do either a get from the MC or even a set from a direct input device,

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#3

Thank you for the excellent pointers. I just got back home and am starting to try out some animation setup using in-place, and figuring out how to get the relevant data from the MC

#4

Thank you so much. You enlightened me like a sun :slight_smile: