Character Animation approach - Puppet Strings?

Unity Engine
1

Hello, I’m quite new here so if anyone knows of any better/availible technique on how to do character animation, please enlighten me.

My main goal for this character animation approach is to have dynamic character movement. In reality, nothing should move the same way. So I am hoping to be able to add small random adjustments to character animation(i.e idling, walking, running, ect), as far as I know I don’t think this is do-able using the conventional character animation approach. and if it is then it may be more tedious then this approach once this system is fully built. Hopefully this should also be easier then creating animations in a 3rd party software. It should also be easier to have the character place his feet correctly and move properly at the right speed.

My main goal for this character animation approach is to only need the following.

A fully rigged character, (No animations)
Unity3D scripting and animation tool.

I haven’t gotten too far with this approach yet but I’ll start off with what I’ve been playing with.

The leg. I have attached 2 rigidbodies. One for the knee, one for the ankle. Basically Instead of controlling the leg to walk by animating each individual leg. I want to control them using puppet strings, and I’ve been using magnets so far…(I’ve just realized I’m not sure why i’ve been using magnets) Anyways I’ve been using little cubes with magnet scripts attached to them to control each joint. and then eventually I’ll attach some rough animation to the magnets and some script to have some type of randomization movement.

Well anyways since this isn’t plain character animation but rather rigidbody character animation. I think it would be easier to have the character have proper stepping.

Also if this approach is not with working on can someone explain to me how locomotion works.

Thank youuu

2

you would rather try to achieve attractive animation by coding marionette strings, than animate in maya?

I would think it would be far more simple, if you wanted animation a little more organic in nature to either build various walk cycles and then use a randomized animation.blend (randomized target weight, time and even animation if you built a few) to add a little bit of chaos to the walk.

Or maybe you could build a base walk cycle and then use your rigid body approach with a randomized force, and have the animation.blend with a target weight of 100% to the walk cycle. Not sure if that technique would work, but it would add a random element to the animation.

Basically you are re-inventing a rig system if you are building constraining objects that you use to move your geo in 3D space. That’s exactly what a rig does already.