I am building a orthographic platformer in 2.5D style with 3D assets. However, I’ve hit a bit of a snag in character animation. I have my model, and basics all set up - a decent skeleton. However, do I animate the model so that there is only one set of animations and flip it in code on the Y axis, or do I make two - flipping left and right per appropriate direction? Both seem valid and I can do both, although the second takes longer and fills the export with duplicate information. Which one is the best method?
If you are using 3d character animation only, then I would prefer to flip the character in code only as it will save you animation frames for extra flip animation and the replacement of animation during flip. Also, to achieve smoothness you can do the flip with a lerp rather than a quick flip.
But rather than using a 3D character animation as the game is orthographic, you can use go with 3D rendered animation which will give you 2D frames of the animation rather than using 3D character itself.