- Animating for Games
- Games and Staging
- Standard Moves
- Cycles
- Moving Cycled Characters
- Hooking Up
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Moving Cycled Characters
Because cycles are essentially the digital equivalent of walking on a treadmill, the character will need to move forward as it walks by translating the master node of the skeleton. This work is usually the job of the programmer who connects the action of the game pad to the action of the character. For the character to look good while he is running and walking, the programmer will need to know the stride length of the character. This is simply the distance that the character moves forward with each step.
This could be problematic if the character moves at variable speeds based on the position of the joystick. In this case, the feet might have to slide a bit. One solution could be to use walks and runs that move at different speeds. As the character accelerates, he might go from a walk to a run to a fast run. This puts more burden on the animators and programmers, but it looks better than feet that slide.