2-minute Quadruped Locomotion Demo

Rigging
1

I have a lot of slightly unconventional things that I do when I set up animation trees for my characters. I’ve always wanted to put together a series of 2-minute videos that highlights some of my animation ideas. Now that I’m not in AAA there isn’t really anything stopping me so here’s the first one! If there is any interest in this sort of thing then I’ll keep slapping them together each week as I have time.

This is a video on how I address Quadruped locomotion. I find the traditional approach of blending between an idle and a walk cycle is terrible for quadrupeds. You never know which feet are in the air at any given time so the blend is sloppy and results in sliding. Obviously a large animation team can solve this by making a large number of transition animations - but I’m one person on a team of 6 right now. I only animate 2-3 days a week. Also I loath transition animations - they greatly slow down your iteration. So here’s how I solved things instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zcvBS-qo80&feature=youtu.be

Is there much interest in this sort of thing?

2

Hi! I just saw both of your videos. Interesting to see your approach to animation setup in Unreal. Cool to see how nice result you got but very very few animation.

3

I just saw the videos as well. It looks like it’s turning out well. Just curious, what are your thoughts on how you are going to solve the foot planting problem on the turn?

I’m keen to see what you come up with for it. Good Luck!