I would like to create a character that moves like Leon in RE4. This video demonstrates Leon's walk cycle, which I'd like to reproduce. I'm confused about which bones of my character's skeleton should be rotated to achieve the desired cool "sideways" look.

At first I thought that his feet and hip are not rotated at all and that only his abdomen was rotated. But after watching the above video (for example at 00:20) where a camera FOV hack was applied and one can finally see his lower body, I'm not sure anymore.

How has this walk cycle been created? Did they take a walk-straight-forward-animation and then rotated some bones? If yes, which ones? I guess somebody who has a great eye for animations can see that.

Thank you.

  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is a question asking "how game X did Y?". \$\endgroup\$ – Tyyppi_77 Jan 2 at 11:49
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    \$\begingroup\$ I think this might be on-topic, if it's a modding question about working with animations & models from this game, or if it's a question about reproducing a similar animation/movement style in the asker's own game. It's not quite clear at the moment what the end goal is though - @tmighty, can you please edit to clarify what game development task you're working on? You may also want to ask this on a more animation-centric forum, as I think our community leans more heavily to programmers & designers atm. \$\endgroup\$ – DMGregory Jan 2 at 12:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ I edited the question to be about reproducing the effect rather than how RE4 specifically did it, which addresses the (otherwise valid) concerns about on-topicness, I think. \$\endgroup\$ – Josh Jan 2 at 16:40
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    \$\begingroup\$ I don't understand why "how game X did Y?" is considered offtopic. It is like saying "how experiment X yields result Y?" is offtopic on a Physics SE. \$\endgroup\$ – S. Tarık Çetin Jan 2 at 21:59
  • \$\begingroup\$ @S.TarıkÇetin This isn't Physics though, and we've adopted different community guidelines. There are several discussions on meta that led to the current consensus; if you want to present the argument we should adopt a different rule, you should create a new meta post. \$\endgroup\$ – Josh Jan 2 at 22:38

Leon's body position here is a fairly common martial pose: it lets him present less of a forward-facing target and provides stability by lowering his center of gravity and allowing him to more easily shift his weight in any direction.

While you could try to reproduce this by only animating the upper body, you should only do so if your character literally has no lower body. Real humans, unlike video game humans, are not a series of disconnected bones. Muscles and tissue hold them together and apply constraints to the range of motion of any individual piece.

Simply rotating the character's torso but leaving the legs unchanged, as if the character is just walking forward, will look weird because real human body's aren't tanks.

To get into that pose, a real human needs to rotate the hips. A counter-rotation of some kind to the legs, arms and neck, so the hands, feet and head face forward to varying appropriate degrees, is then required. The knees have to bend to lower the center of gravity, as well.

Probably the short answer to your question is "all or most of them," but without seeing your actual rig and the problems you're currently having getting the look you want, it's going to be hard to provide more specific guidance.

  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you. If all bones including the root bone were rotated, the character would simply move in a diagonal line. Instead, I think it moves differently. However, I don't see exactely how. I tried to get a hold on the animation file, but to no avail. Else it would have been pretty easy to see the rig's bone's rotation, etc. \$\endgroup\$ – tmighty Jan 2 at 20:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ All the bones may have to rotate (or otherwise be transformed), but they won't all rotate by the same amount. Some will be counter-rotated, as noted, others maybe more or less relative to their parents, et cetera. And yes, locomotion will not necessarily follow the "forward" direction of character's rotated pelvis. \$\endgroup\$ – Josh Jan 2 at 22:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you. I was hoping I would get a more technical review of the locomotion system of Leon in RE4, but of course, that would be out of the scope of the general nature of the question. \$\endgroup\$ – tmighty Jan 4 at 0:44

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