My responsibilities on the Shellshock 2 project included the research and development of the new animation sequencing system. This system had several functions.
- To manage the indirection between character states (such as walking, running, firing etc.) and actual animations.
- To allow the artists to control the way characters could transition between the various states, through various types of blending and transition logic, the result of which are animation sequences.
- To combine the various animation sequences to produce a realistic character movement and action.
To produce a character with a high level of realism, I modified the game engine to take into account the blended motion within the animation (sometimes described as root motion) when calculating the characters motion. Prior to this the characters motion had solely been driven by either the controlling player’s input or the controlling AI’s input.