Ember Humanoid Animations

This page is a work in progress,
meaning things are incomplete, unfinished, not fully thought out, might disappear again, and generally are subject to change.
Do not rely on any of this just yet!

Overview

Humanoid creatures share a common biped skeletal structure. Humanoid creatures are typically also sentient in nature and share similar movements, skills, actions, and expressions. These are expressed using a combination of skeletal and pose animations.

Skeletal Animation

The bulk of humanoid animations in Ember are skeleton based. Ember makes use of the Standard Humanoid Animations Skeleton.

NOTE: (http://www.ogre3d.org/docs/manual/manual_76.html)

Pose Animations

Useful in facial animation, and to achieve a special unique deformations of the mesh, this form of animation can be blended with Skeletal animation, but unlike the skeleton which is a separate file which contains the animation data, pose animation is contained within each mesh file.

NOTE: (http://www.ogre3d.org/docs/manual/manual_80.html)

Defining Animations

For a model to make use of the animation tracks held within the skeleton file it needs to be defined in the Actions section of the model definition.

Animations List

The animations should correspond directly to actions in mason, in addition to the standard movement animations. The following is a compilation of the current status of the animations available for the humanoid character in Ember, and how they map against the server side actions.

NOTE: This list needs updating.

Models

Animation name	Description	Ember name	Server actions	Status
Idle	The character is idle, breathes and perhaps shifts position, cracks the knuckles etc.. This would preferably be a couple of different animations that can be randomly played, to not make it too apparent that they're looping.	humanoid.skeleton: wf_humanoid-idle_*	Idle
Walk forwards	Simple forward walking animation	humanoid.skeleton: wf_humanoid_walk_Clip	Move forwards
Walk backwards	Simple backwards walking animation		Move backwards
Run forwards	Simple forward running animation	humanoid.skeleton: wf_humanoid_walk_Clip	Move forwards with greater speed
Sidestep	Simple side stepping walking animation		Move to the side
Swim	The character swims. For now we'll use the same animation for both idle and movement.		The character is placed in water
Pickup	The character picks something from the ground. The same animation can be used when the character drops something.	humanoid.skeleton: wf_humanoid-pick-up_Clip	Action: pickup, drop
General fidgeting	A general animation that can be used whenever there's no other animation to use for an action	humanoid.skeleton: wf_humanoid-fletching_Clip	Generic action
Chop	The character chops down a tree.		Action: chop
Punch	The character makes an offensive punch	humanoid.skeleton: wf_humanoid-offense_punch_Clip	Action: attack
Swing a sword	The character makes an offensive swing with a sword		Action: attack
Defend	The character defends against an offensive action		Action: defend
Eat	The character eats		Action: eat
Collapse	After being defeated in combat or starving to death, the character should collapse and end up in a collapsed state on the ground.		Action: collapse
Rise	After collapsing in combat, the character gets up again.		Action: ?
Dig	The character digs in the ground.		Action: dig
Delve	The character uses a pickaxe to delve.		Action: delve
Sow	The character uses a trowel to sow a seed in the ground.		Action: sow