Hi everyone,

I'm starting to work on my first 3D game, and I was wondering how to do the animation.

Do you have to make each animation separately?
Example:
1. Right punch with movement in all directions
2. Left punch with movement in all directions
...

Or would you do something like:
1. Animate movement
2. Animate attacks
3. Combine animations in game

If it's like the second option, would all the animations be done on the same character right after the others, then the correct part played in game?

One last question: if you have leg animations for normal movement, as well as specific leg animations for attacking (engaging the hips for a punch for example), would you animate the legs for the punch at the same time in the timeline as the punch itself?

Sorry if this is confusing wording. If you have questions I'll try to clarify.

Thanks.

Not confusing, i know exactly what you are talking about (;

What games generally will do is be able to play different animations on different bone groups.

So, on the lower body you can play a walk, run, or idle animation.

meanwhile, on the upper body you can play a right punch, left punch, shoot, or reload animation.

You can split up the bone groups into finer detail (ie left arm animations, right arm animations etc) but usually splitting it into lower body and upper body is enough.

In your question about doing a punch where you get your whole body into it (like an exaggerated upper cut perhaps?) what you can do is play the same full body animation on both the upper body and the lower body.

You have to make sure they are running at the same rate and that they are synchronized in time, but that's one way to do it.

HTH (: