Animation vs scripting movement?

Unity Engine
1

Hi guys,

Just wondering how this works. When you play an animation on your character, say for example, climbing up on a ledge - does the animation handle changing the position of the character, or do you need to also change the characters position via scripting?

I guess in this example with the scripting you might need to instantly move this transform position to the top of the ledge as soon as the animation finishes?

Thanks.

2

You will have to script the movement too. The animation will animate the character, but the main pivot will stay where it was (AFAIK). I don’t have a clue how to do the thing with the ledge, as I’ve only worked on FPS games (just my favourite genre). But I guess you will need two animations - one for when climbind and another for when climbed. Your player will have different positions in the animations and to look like it’s climbing, when the animations change, you will move the player with some distance, so that the script move and the animation move will cancel each other.

3

Yeah, I would say…

In the animation for walking, you have the origin (pivot) at the characters feet.
In the animation for climbing, you have the origin at the characters hands, finishing the animation with the pivot at the characters feet (i.e you treat the origin as ground level).

When your character starts to climb, script the object to move to the ledge position (so it will now rest with the characters hands)
When your character finished climbing, it will revert to a standing animation - with the pivot at its feet, so it will all work smoothly.

-JF

4

Thanks, will give it a go once I get these animations.

5

What you see and what is happening in the physical environment can be 100% different in the environment. So naturally it is safe to assume that animations can ignore the character controller and rigidbody and vice versa. I can make a collision box that is as big as a hand on a human and it would just look like bullets go through him without doing damage. Animations could still suggest his moving head is a target though. Or that he LOOKS like he can stand on the box , but it’s just the small colliding box that does, not the meshes or any other drawables