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Author Topic: Best practices for animating characters?  (Read 1844 times)

Zarpd

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Best practices for animating characters?
« on: February 09, 2015, 09:48:46 AM »
Hello!  Playmaker/code noob here, so apologies in advance if this ends up being a silly question!


I'm in the process of making a 2D platformer.  My character can run, jump, and aim in 8 directions.  Each of these is handled in its own tiny, clean FSM - because I figure one action should not stop the other (stop me here, if this is bad playmaker practice!)

I am using Mechanim's "Animator Play" action to animate the character.  I got it working perfectly for walking (though I had to make a Idle Facing Left state AND and Idle Facing Right state, which was a little weird to me), but it all falls apart when two FSMs are trying to use Animator Play independently of one another, and I don't know what to do.


The aiming FSM has animations for aiming in 8 directions on the ground.  I have animations for when the character is aiming in the air, and animations when the character jumps.  I'm not sure how to animate my character if it is jumping AND aiming at the same time.

What are the best practices here?  I imagine I could make a separate FSM for when he is jumping AND aiming at the same time and disable the regular jump and the regular aim, but this sounds like it would get very messy very fast.  What would you do in this scenario?  Am I missing something obvious?

wetcircuit

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Re: Best practices for animating characters?
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2015, 12:07:58 PM »

Zarpd

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Re: Best practices for animating characters?
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2015, 12:24:19 PM »
I should have mentioned that this is a very very simple, sprite-based character along the lines of Megaman.  Avatar masks would not apply, right?  Or do I misunderstand?

Zarpd

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Re: Best practices for animating characters?
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2015, 04:25:56 PM »
Anyone else have an idea how to do mechanim animations when multiple FSMs are in play?