I seem to be having a bit of a problem with my custom crouch animation. I'm using the Game::Chr class to load in a character and have assigned my own custom animations.

The problem is, in the ME, the animation plays fine and all the bones animate correctly. However, in the actual game, the animation seems to skip some keyframes on the right leg for some reason.

I created a video showing the problem. You will need to watch the video a few times as it is very quick. The first part of the video shows the animation playing in the ME. Watch the bottom right section of the video. You can see the animation plays smoothly and the right leg steps out smoothly.

The second part of the video shows the animation in the game. Watch the right leg and you'll see that it snaps into place. It is like it is skipping all the keyframes in the middle.

Watch Video

Anyone have any ideas on what might cause this? Obvioulsy EE can handle the animation just fine as it plays well in the ME. I'm assuming the Game::Chr class is mucking it up, prehaps because of blending or something?

I believe I've found the solution for anyone else that may have a similar problem. I loaded the animation into the ME and then from the menu selected Animation -> Convert -> Target Orientations to Relative Rotations.

I'm not 100% sure what this means or why I need to do this. Perhaps it is a bug in EE with handling Target Orientations?

can you upload the skel+anim files?

See attached zip file.

There is actually two problems that I've found. The first one as described in the original post, which you can see in the crouch_bug animation. Be sure to try it both in the ME and then in game to see the difference. It is smooth in the ME, but not in game.

The second problem you will see with the crouch_f animation (if you compare it with the walk animation). You will see that the skeleton does not stay on the ground. When I created the animation in 3ds max, the feet where on the ground. But when I bring that animation on to my skeleton in the ME, it puts it up in the air.

Please note, the skeleton is different from the default Chr, so you will need to set these animations in the sac to test in game.

Just bumping this up in case you missed it Esenthel. See attached zip file in my previous post.

thanks, I've seen it, will check this soon

how are you playing the "crouch_bug.anim" in your game codes?
do you have a target orientation keyframes set for your "stand" animation for all bones?
I've noticed that the "walk" anim has relative rotation keyframes, instead of target orientation, can you convert them to target (using menu option), and perform this for all other animations (including stand)?

OK thanks, you've helped me work out the problem. The "stand" animation does not have a target orientation keyframe for all bones. It doesn't have one for any of the bones in the right leg. So when the character blends from stand to crouch, the right leg snaps to position instead of smoothly blending into position.

I've found that to fix this problem you need to set a target orientation keyframe for all bones (using the Add Empty Orientation Keyframe to All Bones menu option), or convert target orientation keyframes to rotation keyframes (using the Convert->Target Orientations to Relative Rotations menu option) in the ME.

Esenthel, is there pros or cons as to using one type of keyframes over the other? Which would you generally recommend to use, Target Orientations or Relative Rotations?

target orientation is for all animations except facial anims. Relative should be used for facials
I'll add this info to the docs

http://www.esenthel.com/wiki/index.php?title=Animation