(HELP) Player Interaction with Environment

Unity Engine
1

Okay, so I’ve seen this type of animation (if you can call it that) in many games before, and it occurs when the player interacts with the environment, but I’ve always been stumped on how to do them. Wolfenstien the New Order and Old Blood have various moments where the player will be executing a nazis, pulling levers and vaulting over obstacles from first person view. While in titanfall 2, wall hangs will be from a first person perspectives and pilot executions will be from 3rd person.

Anyways I digress, my questions are:

  1. How would I animate a entity on entity interactions, for 1st person and 3rd (Takedowns, Executions etc…).
  2. How would I animate an entity on Environment interaction (Ledge Hangs, Button Pushes, Obstical Vaulting) in first person?

My main source of confusion would be (in the wolfenstien takedown animation) would the arms be animated seperaly from the Nazi’s reaction to getting stabbed, or would their 2 skeletons be combined one scene, animated together then applied to both arm and nazi meshes?

(Sorry for long winded rambling)

Some examples of what I’m am talking about:
TL;DL How do I animate these?
Titanfall 2 Executions:

Wolfenstien Takedowns + Some Environment interactions:

2

  1. There are two ways this is accomplished. Both processes are complex and require testing and trouble shooting.
    1A The animations of the two characters are created together and when the player clicks the button to ‘execute’ the move the characters are in the correct alignment/placement to act on the input. The combined animations happen, and then the player character transitions back out of the combined animation - into the player controlled state. Usually in the combined animation state there is little/no interaction like a in-game quick time event but without interaction.
    The other way 1B is to somehow (I don’t know) swap the parent of the main player rig to attach to the enemy rig. I believe this is done in games like Skyrim, God of War and Borderlands when they “mount up”. Borderlands the character climbs on a vehicle and then is parented to the vehicle while the player controls the vehicle. In God of War Kratos mounts a Cyclops, or Griffon and can control that enemy. In Skyrim the player can mount carriages and horses and other beasts.
    Both examples provided above look to me like they are mocap animations created together at the same time and play together.

  2. A great source to research is some of the excellent character controllers available in the asset store.