I have a lot of slightly unconventional things that I do when I set up animation trees for my characters. I’ve always wanted to put together a series of 2-minute videos that highlights some of my animation ideas. Now that I’m not in AAA there isn’t really anything stopping me so here’s the first one! If there is any interest in this sort of thing then I’ll keep slapping them together each week as I have time.
This is a video on how I address Quadruped locomotion. I find the traditional approach of blending between an idle and a walk cycle is terrible for quadrupeds. You never know which feet are in the air at any given time so the blend is sloppy and results in sliding. Obviously a large animation team can solve this by making a large number of transition animations - but I’m one person on a team of 6 right now. I only animate 2-3 days a week. Also I loath transition animations - they greatly slow down your iteration. So here’s how I solved things instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zcvBS-qo80&feature=youtu.be
Is there much interest in this sort of thing?