   Looping Animations
  This is something I have wondered about for a while now. Should animators loop animations such as walking and running so that the animation can be playing continuously so that it looks seemless, or should the programmers handle this issue? For example, my animation system works with interpolated animations, so when it is time to go loop from the end of the animation to the start of it again, instead of just jumping from the end to the beginning, I could have my code interpolate from the last animation key from in the animation to the starting animation key. Would this be wise?   
  How long is the time between the last frame and the first frame? That's the problem, and that's why you usually just implement jumping from last to first frame, instead of interpolating between the two. I'm not sure how others do this, but we instructed our artists to build looping animations so that the last frame and the first frame are identical. If the walk cycle is 30 frames, a 31 frame long animation is exported, with frame 30 being an exact copy of frame 0. The final frame only marks the length of the previos frame and the length of the animation, and the fact that it is identical to the first frame just eases the implementation.   ;  I would suggest letting the animation controller loop the animation. However, slightly different than what Schrompf suggests, if you have a 31 frame animation (frames 0 through 30) with frame 30 identical to frame 0, export the animation from frame 0 through frame 29 (rather than 30). The anim controller should then loop nicely from frame 29 back to 0 for a smooth animation. Depending on our anim controller track settings, if the animation has two identical frames (0 and 30), you may notice a slight "hesitation" as the animation displays frame 30 one step and identical frame 0 the next step with no movement between.   