Steve P Proteau - Root Motion From Footsteps

Root Motion from Footsteps

Advanced animation techniques, including Orientation Warping, Slope Warping, Speed Warping, and Motion Warping, rely on root motion. However, many freely available, high-quality animations—such as Paragon Assets on FAB—either lack root motion or produce root motion with foot-slip after retargeting to a different skeleton.

This tool effectively analyzes foot movement within an animation sequence, generating Speed and Direction curves to apply precise root motion. Seamless integration with the Curve Editor enables real-time adjustments to the generated Motion Curves, ensuring accurate root motion updates.

Rather than manually modifying position offsets for root motion, adjusting Speed and Direction curves offers a significantly more efficient approach. Any updates to velocity within the sequence automatically refine root positions later in the animation, streamlining the editing process. Additionally, by synchronizing root motion to precisely counteract foot movement, this tool minimizes foot-slip along the axis of movement.

Features

  • Super easy to use: Demo Video

  • Editor only tool – no runtime component.

  • Integrates with curve editor for real-time updates

  • Optionally snaps movement to predominant X, Y, XY, or -XY axis

  • Supports direction changes

  • Minimizes foot-slip along the axis of movement

  • Configurable foot bone names, and curve names

  • Requires a skeletal root bone

  • Implemented in ProRootMotion plugin

  • Professionally implemented in C++.