How to syncronize two animations without delays [duplicate]

Question

I have one character idle animation running inside a game in a loop, over and over again. A a certain time I trigger another animation to be played, for the same character.

The second animation won't play immediately, as will be a discontinuity in my character animation. First I wait for the idle animation to finish and then I play my second animation. Now I have a smooth, continuous animation, BUT I have introduced a delay between my action and character animation.

If I play the second animation right away as it is triggered, the character animation won't be continuous and smooth.

I was thinking on breaking the idle animation in small pieces and also to have the same number of second action animations to match the last frame of the idle pieces. This won't solve the delay completely, only will minimize it a bit.

So it's a magic formula of how can I get rid of this delay?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you're looking for responsiveness then you'll have to blend the animation, their lot's of tricks in making your blends looks clean. Foot placement is the biggest culprit for weird blends (if two feet slide it looks really off).

One trick is that at least one foot needs to be planted in the same spot as the first frame of your next animation. If it's the back foot then you have you more time for a smooth blend. You can also transition to left foot or right foot forward first. You can have a intermediate animation that is synced with your idle animation the basically has a planted foot, then you blend to that one then blend to your walk.

It's always easier to figure out some clever animations then it is to create some crazy rules for your animation system.

Answer 2

Depending on what the idle animation is, you could mark some frames as "close enough" to the ending position so you can cut it short at these points, instead of waiting until the very end. At anything above 10 FPS you probably won't notice anything anyway.

If you want to get very fancy, you could have "transition points" for every pair of animations you're interested in... say, you could go from frame 7 of Idle to frame 3 of Kicking Ball, instead of playing them one after the other.

Source: I spent countless hours trying to get smooth transitions for Wild West Wendy. We made bigger and better games after that one, but this one may be the one I'm the most proud of - in no small part because of the amount of detail, including the animations, we put into it (sorry, nostalgic moment!)