Quadruped Locomotion Solutions - Part1

Quadruped locomotion is a nightmare. You never know which feet are in the air at any given time, so blending from a movement animation to an idle tends to look very ugly. I'm on a team of 6 and I can't waste time making multiple transition animations for NPCs. I prefer to never make any transition animations at all - I find they slow down iteration considerably. Here is a video blog of the solutions I'm trying for quadruped locomotion in UE4.

If there is interest in these types of videos then I'd be happy to make more! I am a Tech Artist and Animator actively working on this character for The Flame in The Flood. Please support us on Kickstarter! Every dollar will go towards making a better game.

[JasperCousins]

I really like how you do this, In my projects I'm ending up with foot sliding all the time in transitions between idle and walk, really neat solution! In fact all your videos show really neat solutions, very impressed, think that's among the most neat tips I've learned in the shortest time, thanks! alright, I'm persuaded me to get the game now :) Looking forward to more vids!

[PrimalShutter]

Awesome, thanks for this, I'm trying to prepare for a job interview with ue4 and this saved me in making my cat model better :D

[thatdarnsatan]

This is so simple and so clever. Love it!

[PiLLaRocK]

It would be great to see more videos like this.

[thomashardy]

wow this is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing!

[toddheckel]

Interesting approach - have you thought about how to handle transitions to other states where you would otherwise assume a known idle pose? If it can come to a stop (when the velocity hits zero) at any point in the cycle, it seems like this complicates authoring animations that the character needs to perform while idle, as well as transitions to other poses.

[Anyreck]

more oh more would be great. Most interesting.

[Mireneye]

What is your pipeline/workflow to bring custom skeleton into UE4? Been looking around all morning to see if I could find a solid "how to" on this. Soo.. Maya -> UE4 tutorial perhaps up next?

[zeond]

How does your BlendSpace looks like? I'm trying to solve similar problem.

[novaria]

Would you do this the same way today as well? Interesting approach.