I am going to take a guess and say it's so you introduce difficulties one step a t a time, to work on things incrementally from easier to complex. Since as soon as you have translation, you have to take other things into account, so it's easier to first do the walk cycle while stationary and avoid the hassle of having to displace the model in 3D space, which would introduce unwarranted complexity to an already complex thing. I think I nailed it and Wayne will say you nailed it.
That makes sense, though I mean more generally like can I get away with only making stationary animations for a game and translate the character in the game engine instead? Would importing a translated walk animation into the game engine provide some advantage over doing it that way?
It is common to do stationary walk cycles for games and even animation.
Hi David,
There's different walks for different purposes.
By far the most common for game engines is the in-place walk. Then the character's root is animated in the game engine to take care of the translation.
Another way is to actually translate the character forward - which is more common outside of the game engine.
There is actually a 3rd way - where you animate the character translating forward, but also animate the root control translating backwards.
That way you actually have an in-place walk, but if you mute the root translation, you also have a translating walk.
(I only learned that trick a few years ago)
Wait @waylow, translating the root backwards is an actual technique? I did it in combination with baking visual key to overwrite my animation, because I couldn't get the stationary walk and run cycles to look right. Thanks to your course I now know that it was the body up/down and arm swing that was the problem.
dillenbata3 - yeah I learned it from a game animator at EA
I'm glad to know that I helped you solve your problem :)
Thank you all for the insights! I'll start off with stationary cycles and see how it goes!