Chapter 12: Blending between Animations
The transition from one animation to another can be jarring. Imagine if a character is in the middle of a punch and the player decides that they want to start running. If the animation just switches from the jump clip to the run clip, the transitions will be hard and unnatural.
Animation blending can fix this by generating intermediate frames that are an average of both animations. This fade is usually short—a quarter of a second or less. The smooth animated transition generated by this short blend provides a much better looking experience.
This chapter explores how to implement animation blending and additive animation blending and how to set up a crossfade controller to manage a blend queue. The following topics will be covered:
- Pose blending
- Crossfading animations
- Additive blending