I'm currently drafting some specs to send to modelers/animators for a game I'm working on. Being my first foray into creating a 3D game with humanoids in it, I'm not really sure how to approach walk cycles.

Each unit can either be IDLE, ROTATING (while not moving), RUNNING. I'm not too concerned about transitioning between idle and running using key-framed animations, since the units themselves are going to be ~100pix high.

However ROTATING is going to be awkward, like PS1 awkward, a model spinning on the Z-axis.

Is there a way to do convincing rotations without using some sort of IKish system?

Cheers,
Tristan

Quote: Is there a way to do convincing rotations without using some sort of IKish system?

Not really, and it would be far more trouble than its worth even with IK.

It's always awkward to animate a turn in place when you don't know how far the turn will be (if you do know -- like it's always 90 degrees -- it's simple enough to animate that realistically). You shouldn't worry too much about it as many AAA games to this day don't even attempt to handle it and the characters literally just slide around in place.

Some games have a generic little "feet move up and down" animation that covers it up slightly. Some games do a proper turn animation for a specific angle and use it regardless of what the angle actually is. That last one is probably the best approach even if you still have a little sliding; a nice animation that doesn't line up is better than a crappy animation that doesn't line up.

I'm guessing you could have 3 rotation animations; 33, 66 and 90 degrees and play the animation that's closest to the rotation angle. If you're rotation is larger than 90 degrees just play a sequence of animations, rotating more than 90 degrees in one step seems unnatural to me. You could also have an animation for a small angle and loop the animation though that might look funny :P.

Thanks for the suggestions LockePick and Mussi. So it looks like the best approach is to create a pre-canned rotation animation. For my game it'll probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a 45 to 90 degree turn.

Thanks guys!

Quote: Original post by Mussi
I'm guessing you could have 3 rotation animations; 33, 66 and 90 degrees and play the animation that's closest to the rotation angle. If you're rotation is larger than 90 degrees just play a sequence of animations, rotating more than 90 degrees in one step seems unnatural to me. You could also have an animation for a small angle and loop the animation though that might look funny :P.

180 degrees is perfectly natural (and very necessary in real life) - you just put one foot back and pivot on the other heel.