Can I override or add to bone animations?

[Carm3D]

Hello,

New to this software.  I've successfully imported an FBX with bone animation and it's awesome.

My question is, if I animate a character with a run cycle, but then I want him to be holding a weapon, is it possible to override the animation only in his arms, replacing the animation with a pose to hold a weapon?

What about only animating the character's facial bones for talking?  Can the facial speech values of one animation clip be added to a run cycle animation clip?

How about blending between a walk cycle and a run cycle?  Is that possible?

[Phodex Games]

Yes all this is possible. 

For blending use the blend value in the PlayAnimation function. To play animations only on particular bones, you need to call the animation function on the specific bones you want to play the animation.

 

Here an example. Say you want the character to speak while running. I will simplify the structure for better unterstanding:

--play running
self.entity:PlayAnimation("running", 1, 500)
--play talk animation only on the face
self.entity:GetChild("FaceBones"):PlayAnimation("talking", 1, 500)

Obviously the "FaceBones" entity most likey is called something like "Head" containing all other bones, like lip, eyebrown etc bones.

Imporant to know is that if you play a new animation on parts of your model the old animation gets overwritten (so the head bones dont play the run animation obviously) and it is not nessecary to play the animation on all sub bones. Check your bone hierarchy in the editor and just play the animations on the parent. Hope you understood everything.

[Carm3D]

Oh okay great thanks!  So the trick here is to use two bones in the neck...  So if he is running his head will bob, but if he is talking the child of that neck bone can have speech-related neck movement.  Very cool!  I wish I could hire someone to get me over the learning curve so I could get on with the cool stuff!

Thanks again!