However i have to say that i’m a real Noob when speaking about animations. Till now i’ve created my animations in blender(or bought it), then with mecanim created my behaviours and in the script i just set floatr,triggers and bools to activate transitions.
But this GDC conference was really inspiring and i just want to start scripting some procedural animations, using a low number of keyframes or rather no keyframes at all ( full physics character).
So i’ve two questions:
Do you know some book, paid course, free course about procedural animations or anything that can let me study the approach to them?
Until now i’ve used a pretty simple mecanim workflow and networking animations was pretty easy. But what about procedural animations? How to network them?
Hey Baenor - If you really interested in procedural animations I’d suggest - first- applying some procedural animations on top of the process your already using. I don’t know blenders capabilities, but in 3D Max there is a bunch of procedural animation controllers that can be stacked on top of the common Euler, Quaternion controllers to add procedural motion.
Of course these procedural controllers are still controlled by the animator and key frames, but it adds a level of complexity and vibrance to standard keyframed animations.
Until Unity comes up with a bone rig within the engine that you can apply a character to, with complete key frame or code manipulation ability, I think accomplishing what Rosen has done, in his custom engine (afaik), isn’t completely doable.
But certain aspects can already be done in Unity right now. For instance one of the real cool things in Overgrowth is how the characters lean procedurally when they turn. In Unity this could be a accomplished with a blend tree. The networking - right now - can be accomplished in Unity using mecanim to it’s fullest extent, or code if you prefer.
Non-keyframed procedural animations is still a long way off. Even in the example you provided, Rosen performed a lot of animation work prior to coding, that is procedurally blended and generated at run-time.
Possibly one of the best sources to look at for procedural stuff is movies. Animators are of course still involved, but there are a lot of things, procedurally driven now on the 3D characters for motion pictures.
keyframes of animations are poses*, angles and position of bones.
with animation controllers chain you can keyframe poses into animation2
full physical means rigidbody+collider. (ragdoll without animation : though animated ragdoll is easy to do w 2 instances of character skinned/ragdoll skeleton: either by fixed joints, or by lerping.)
also it’s different for player or enemy character
. poses you can do in Skele, FinaliK etc.
2 you can record character animation in unity with SceneMotionCapture (in Generic now, when unity will support Tpose reference, will be Humanoid too)
in procedural animations, you still need to know the positions/rotations of (if not the actual bones 'like in mocap file, then the) effectors (iK, Partel was able to do full ik walking long ago from idle animation)
if full procedural animation (no mocap, no animator controller, but forexmp. raycast)
then its very complex. (or delicate. it involves balance, precision in movement and reaction to surrounding evaluated at every moment …)*
there are well know programs that do this kinda thing (full physical characters)
like Endorphin
in unity terms (and I believe these are mocap animations animated ←→ physics ragdoll)
0:09 RagNimator
0:10 triggered fixed joint, animated ragdoll
0:12 MecanimAnimationBlender
0:22 going back to idle : var balance, fixed joint/iK / lerping, animated ragdoll
0:27 blend in: I think it means going from animated to physical (could be triggered, but how would be weighted? ik? between pose at trigger and going to physics?)
0:32 blend out. having balance, fixing on place, going to animated idle, get up animation
**I tried it once, but my character was only able to stand or making two step before falling over if being impacted.
its like trying to place cards on their edge.
Is there any chance you could host the reading material you included in this post? Would love to go through it, but unfortunately I’m late to the party and the dropbox link seems to be expired.
I find this interesting [pic d-f ]
because mecanim is not able to get those rotations, unless having the animation curves cached I think
though the wording might suggest those rotations are applied within a given range
but you might be able to get this project
it was up on unity blog for some time (not anymore)
here it is
:: “start out with a simple walk cycle and it will automatically synthesize sidestep / run / backwards animations for you. If you provide more animations the animations will simply look better.”
