Animation transitions

[ascottk]

This has mentioned a few times & I wondered how D3 handled animations transitions & I found out it's easy. The citywatch in TD is one example I found. When he stops/starts the transition is way too fast.

 

ai_darkmod_base.script seems to handle all of the animations & their transition times & it looks like none of the values have been tweaked (most of the transitions are about 4 frames which may be too fast) so this is something to consider. The transition from patrolling to stationary searching, like in TD, is way too fast.

 

Another thing I'm wondering if it's possible to add transitional animations (or having sequential animations) in the scripts?

[Crispy]

Feel free to change the transition times yourself; you're the animation expert.

 

Sequential animations should be possible in theory; you just start the animation and then wait in a loop until it's finished. There should be some examples in the script already (at least there were last time I looked, which was a distressingly long time ago).

[Domarius]

Ideally I would love to see some transitory anims where nessacary, after release or whatever. I imagine a start_run and stop_run would be really good, eg. you know how people put on the brakes when they come to a stop after running, leaning backwards and taking little steps. Would look cool if you are hiding and watching the guards run by from chasing you and they come to a stop and look around confused.

[greebo]

I post here because I saw a link to this thread from Springheel's Journal:

 

I recently reverted ascottk's change and set the blendframes of the run animation from 10 down to 4, because this caused serious problems with the movement system. One example was that the AI were not taking cover at the correct position anymore. This was due to the blendframes, because they "forced" the AI to still move on a bit after they reached their target position, and basically they missed their goal about one or two meters. The problem is of course more pronounced with the run animation, because it causes the origin to move faster per frame.

 

So, blendframes are a good thing, but handle this with care. I'd go as far as saying not to increase any movement-related animations to a blendframe value higher than 4. With this, they still miss their goal a bit, but that's acceptable.