Smooth Transitions between Animations

[DudeAwesome]

Hi guys,

 

I´m working on some animations like walking, running, jumping, idle, shoot, etc If I use a sequence for every Animation I can seperate all frames for easy animation programming. Now I´m brainstorming about a solution how I can create a smooth transition between those animation sequences.

 

 

e.g.

 

My Character is walking and the loop starts and ends with the left foot on the ground. In a random frame the player now wants to run and the sequence for the run animation is played. The Problem here is that there is no transition between walking and running and the animation looks like there is something missing (animation between walking and running). Someone have a clue how to solve that problem?

[Rick]

Are you using the AnimationManager to do this or are you just thinking about the problem first? Leadwerks uses a blend value when playing animations. The idea behind this is that the blend value is 0 - 1. 0 meaning that animation's weighting has no effect on the model and 1 being it has full effect. With AnimationManager when you change animations you can provide this blend value. What ends up happening is while the transitioning to the new animation both animations are played on top of each other, but over a small period of time the old animation has it's blend value reduced from 1 to 0 (once it reaches 0 it's removed from the active animation playing list), while at the same time the new animation has it's blend value increased from 0 to 1. This creates a smooth transition between different animations.

[DudeAwesome]

ah nice, yeah I was looking for something like this, I forgot the AnimationManager I just used the functions from the API to load different sequences. I will take a look

[Rick]

Once you get this working let me know if you want to know how to do split animations (playing 1 animation on upper 1/2 of body and another on the lower 1/2). I can show you how if you can't figure it out. This comes in handy since it can save you from making more animations in your model. Why make a run and shoot animation when you already have a run animation and you already have a stand and shoot animation (as an example), when you can play the shoot animation on the upper 1/2 and the run animation on the lower 1/2 via code!