More natural movement

[denisw]

I know that the character animations are far away from being finished, but I'd like to give some ideas for possible ways to improve the naturality of the character's movements, a really important issue for a MMORPG oriented towards role-playing like Planeshift:

• Instead of moving the whole body when standing and turning left and right, the animation could be reduced to the movement of the head. At least for shorter turning distances this is a quite more natural movement than turning as a whole, I mean how many people always look straight forwards and only turn their whole body? The head should also always follow the direction the camera is looking at. That way it is always obvious for others in which direction a character is looking, which is practical for sneaking and similair things.
• Strafing left and right could be animated as normally walking left/right, but with the head facing the direction in which the player is looking. I think that is a more likely way of strafing than really walking sideways.

I'm not experienced in 3d modeling and animation, but I would help to implement this where I can (maybe with the help of good tutorials regarding the topic...).

What do you think?

[Nikodemus]

1) Yeah, its is correct approach. While in real it is  abit more complicated, what you described allow for simple coding keeping the realism on highest level. Maybe not exactly easy to code, but much simpler, because what you have to do is one animation only for turning (while the legs are moving) and simple animation for head turning. The legs always move in the same manner, same as head, but the speed may be different. Hmmm, More or less something like this.

2) Nope, strafing is strafing, not walking. Go play some FPSes And yeah, it is too slow in PS and needs animation. In fact two animation, for fast strafing which include jumping ( there are moment when both foots don't touch the ground) and slow strafing when there are moments whe both foots touch the ground and always one of them touch it too. )

[Garris Shrike]

Oh, and add it so where running doesnt slide, and ultra fast strafing.. heh that'd be fun.