   Interpolation between different action
  Hi, unnhh Im having a problem with animation. I dont know how to interpolate between action. for example, my character is standing still, so it plays a standing animation. as soon as I press move key, my character would move and play the walking animation. The thing is, the animation changes abruptly, and Id like to know how those games(I saw Mount and blade, they have beautiful action interpolation) do the trick. So If somebody knows how to do that or can point me to the right direction I'd be grateful......Best regards,Triad Prague   
  There're many options, here are two:1. Use intermediate animation sequences and a state machine to control them. I.e. instead of just two animation "walk" and "running" add two more "start_running" and "stop_running". Thought you need a precise timing(key-frames wise) to control this, i.e. you need a time sequence of walk->start_running->running->stop_running->walk, this can be handled by a state machine. This kind of animation is often used in games where you need high-quality animation sequences. The disadvantage is, that you need to play the whole animation sequence, which is often tighly coupled with player actions, to look right. I.e. when throwing a grenade , the player needs to wait until the grenade is thrown before he can avoid an incoming attack.2. Interpolate (blend) between two animations. This is often used in games where the player want to react very fast to certain situations. An example is a multiplayer shooter. When you want to change an animation i.e. from walk to running, you start playing both animation and blend/interpolate between them during a small period of time. This is done by calculating first all bone orientations of both animation, then interpolate each bone position and rotation independenly from its parent orientation. The interpolation factor alpha [0..1] is based on the blend duration (i.e. 800 ms).You can even increase the quality be combining both techniques.   ;  We're speaking about skeleton based character animation, right? Blending animations that target the same group of bones may need more attention than simple parameter interpolation. Let's use walking and running as examples. Walking is defined as cycle (starting and ending with left leg forward, right leg backward) with a duration of 2 seconds. Running is defined as the same cycle but with a duration of 1 second.Now, at 50% of playing the walking cycle, the player input / AI decides to blend with the running animation. The walking animation currently shows the right leg forward and the left leg backward, so we should obviously not blend with the start of the running animation because it has another leg posture. We have to consider the phases the animations are in! Hence we need to compute the equivalent phase of the running animation from the current phase of the walking animation.Unfortunately, the phase is changing with the elapsed time and depends on the length of the animation. To keep the phase in sync, we need to scale the animations, so that both animations play at the same speed. Because we want to go from the slow animation to the fast animation, we have accelerate the walking animation from its normal speed up to the speed of the running animation, and we have to accelerate the running animation from the slower speed of the walking animation to the nominal speed of the running animation. This can be done by scaling the local animation times using the blending factor.Notice please that the above method works not only for replacing e.g. walking with running. It works also for a lasting mid-speed running; one simply keep the blending factor at a constant value.Standing and walking have no obviously clear phase identity. Maybe it is sufficient to pick the phase at 25% of the walking cycle; otherwise it may become necessary to have a short intermediate sequence.   ;  Wow, thx for the reply....but still, Im confused with it. Id like to have my animation transition quite fast. But maybe I'll have a try with haegarr solution first.....it looks simple and maybe it'll work, as not all of my animation need to transition smoothly(my jump animation doesnt). Actually I've been thinking about ashaman solution. I think egoboo does the same as you describe. I had a look at the model animation and Im amazed (He slices the walk animation into two animation, the first with the left leg ahead, the second with the right leg)   ;  Notice please that my suggestion is an extension. The basics were mentioned by Ashaman as 2nd option. The extension just allows 2 things: Smooth transitions and generating new animations on-the-fly out of the pool of existing animations.   ;  Is this in 2D or 3D? How are you doing the animation?   