Something feels off

[natpasanop11 (NattyHS)]

Hi, so i’ve pretty new to animating in general, not only in studio and i’ve made a running animation in R15 for my game, but something is pretty off in this animation.
Take a look:

I don’t know what exactly is the problem but i can feel something
Do you have any solutions to fix that weird movement?

[oo6j (6_j)]

The torso moving is a bit weird. Movement animations would just move the player from the position of the torso. Keep the torso still instead

[nameswapped3 (daniel)]

You’re repeating the walk forward animation when it’s walking backwards, resulting in it looking like it’s doing the shuffle almost.

[ZacAttackk]

First of all, good job on creating a walk cycle! Those aren’t easy to do. It does need a little tweaking though as you said. Things I notice are:

1. The limb movements are too ‘linear’, making the animation feel a little robotic/unpolished

   • When the legs and arms switch directions, their direction immediately changes. Ideally for organic movement you’d want to dampen the movement so that the limb movement speed slows down subtly surrounding each keyframe.
   • You can do this by either changing the EasingStyle & EasingDirection of the keyframes (afaik the only ‘smoothed’ easing option in the default animator tool is cubic)
   • Or manually refine the movement by slowing movement around keyframes, by adding extra keyframes a little apart.

2. There needs to be more dynamic movement

   • To me, this run animation feels more like a rapid speedwalk / rapid stomping. To make it feel more authentic, there should be more up/down movement in the torso.
   • The legs need to lift forwards/upwards more too, it feels like the character has heavy weights stuck to their feet. When running you are PUSHING off the ground with great force, not scooting forwards rapidly!

3. The left/right movement timing is slightly asymmetric

   • When focusing on the movement of the head, it seems like the timing of the head bobbing up and down isn’t evenly spaced when changing which foot is stepping. It’s subtle but I can imagine a “ba-dum” rhythm like a heartbeat rather than a steady footstep pace.

While animation is subjective, this is where I would work on if this was my run animation

[NotThatGuysUsername (NotThatGuy)]

I’m not the best animator, but here is the running animation from my game. It’s sped up with scripts in game depending on the walk speed.

I kept the torso in place and eased with Moon Animator 2, but I think there’s a way to do it with the base animation editor. To ease something smoothly, you have to keep with the direction of the ease. For example,

If you ease a movement In, and on the next keyframe you ease it In again, it will not look smooth. However if you ease a movement In, and on the next keyframe you ease it Out, it will transition smoothly. The actual keyframe spacing can also influence this.

Here’s my animation in game:

To replace the default walking animation, I did this:

Character.Animate.walk.WalkAnim.AnimationId = RunAnimation.AnimationId