Animation only plays on inclines?
by Sean Rorison · in Artist Corner · 02/02/2002 (3:38 pm) · 8 replies
I've got a character running back animation that is only playing when the character is going downhill backwards; not when the character is on level ground. What circumstances trigger the animation in game? How close do the feet bones need to be to the biped bones to trigger the animation? I don't think I entirely understand the circumstances on how the animation plays in-game from the DSQ. Can anyone tell me? Thanks!
#2
02/03/2002 (11:35 am)
The animation is moving, i.e. it's not running in place. We've tried a few things, including extending the animation; the bounding box is moving with the character as well. But still, only the reverse incline seems to trigger the animation. Any ideas?
#3
02/04/2002 (11:03 am)
I ran into a problem also. It was only on a test guy though and I stopped messing with the animations in order to start a real character before I fixed it. The one thing that you might wanna check is that I heard that you have to actually have the character move in your max scene. Most games I know of you have the character run in place....but appearently for torque they have to move in the direction they run. Maybe this will help.....good luck.
#4
02/05/2002 (2:53 am)
Hmmm...Just thinking about the problem logically, it sounds like your player's bounding box pivot point is not making contact with the ground plane on level surfaces and only touches the terrain when it is forced to walk backwards down the mountain. Maybe you should check the z-axis position of the bounding box pivot point. 'Course, I'm an artist and we're not known for using logic very often. ;)
#5
I think some of the animations are also selected base on this displacement. This was originally put in so that you could have different animations for running up vs. down, vs. flat, etc. Though I don't think it's totally flushed out, and could be causing you problems.
02/06/2002 (12:02 pm)
You might want to try moving the player, as David suggests. You don't have to move it using MilkShape, but the max exporter is a little different. The run-time player code uses this "run-displacement" to determin how fast to play the animations based on the ground travel speed of the player. This helps keep the player's feet from sliding around on the ground.I think some of the animations are also selected base on this displacement. This was originally put in so that you could have different animations for running up vs. down, vs. flat, etc. Though I don't think it's totally flushed out, and could be causing you problems.
#6
The way it works is that you can have two different backward runs, and the engine will pick the correct one based on the actual speed of the character in the game.
If he is going backward down a hill, he has a greater velocity, so it plays the animation.
02/06/2002 (1:06 pm)
Echoing what Tim said, I am fairly sure that this is what is happening. He may be moving, but maybe not enough (or maybe too much)The way it works is that you can have two different backward runs, and the engine will pick the correct one based on the actual speed of the character in the game.
If he is going backward down a hill, he has a greater velocity, so it plays the animation.
#7
02/07/2002 (1:31 am)
Following the idea that the character isn't moving fast or slow enough in the animation to trigger it properly(the character is translating in space, not just walking in place), are there actual hard figures for how much the character should be moving to get its animation triggered in game? 
Torque Owner David Dougher
Pariah Games
In other words don't make your running animation have the model "run in place". It must actually move forward at least a small distance so that the bounding boxes and pivot points move. Then the code will pick up the movement in relation to the ground correctly and make the character move.