Animators, what system do you use in your game?

[BuckarooBonzai]

I know little of animation, other than how to do a simple one, and get it into the engine.
What I am curious about is if anyone can point me in the direction or explain to me what system you use.
For example, how many frames do you use for a walk cycle?
Assume the player is just pressing forward, do you just then recycle the walk cycle until the player stops?
For attack sequences, do you just walk forward, then when the player clicks attack, the attack animation then interrupts the walk cycle?
I guess thats what I'm curious about. The process and system you use for your game.
Any info, or any directions to a place where I can read up about it would be great!
Thanks!

[Greed]

I use 3ds Max/Character studios for all the anims

The trick is to make sure that your anims loops perfectly... first frame/last frame and then you make your X frame walk cycle start over and over again.

There isn't a magic number for the amount of frames...less frames will make your character walk faster/choppier and more frameswill make it walk slower/smoother... then again programmers can tweak the speed...

You dont want to interrupt an animation either, you want them to blend less you want a silly looking game...

Making good animations (read Prince of Persia) is a pain, unless you do that full time and dream about it at night.

The best way to learn how to make them nice in 3d is to know all the underlying principles of 2d animation and any books describing those will give you a nice headstart on you path to stardom.

[BlasterN]

Animation for games have 3 comons.
- Animation is a loop.
- The animation is static in space, i try to the pelvis (in bipeds) is allways in x=0 y=0 & z=0
- Becareful with time! animation in programs like 3dsmax are in frames but when it's exported to Ogre you have to specify time (in seconds), in max by default 20fps.

Character Studio in max r00lz!

[Rixeh]

Maya owns me. Standard timing for film is 24 frames/second. I've got a library of walkcycle pics, 8 shots each representing a 3 second keyframe (for a total of 24). With a bit of digging I'm sure you can find a ton of helpful stuff.

[nicowall]

Rixeh, do you know were I can download or get walking cycles pics. It would be very helpfull. Thanks.