You'll See No More Foot Sliding with This Free Unity Tool
Footwerk combines known solutions to make characters move naturally.
I'm sure we've all encountered characters in video games sliding across the ground instead of stepping on it naturally. If yours do so as well, no worries: Pavel Arkhipov's Footwerk foot placement add-on for Unity fixes this issue effectively.
It targets locomotion problems by combining two already known solutions: motion-matching systems and procedural movement. The first blends a large number of animations but it provides only pre-made animation sets, making custom walks harder to create.
The second is reliable but is expensive and complex. Moreover, it still often struggles with making humans walk realistically.
So Arkhipov set up a system that aims to keep animation easy to adjust and replace, "while still making the character feel grounded, immersive, and responsive to movement speed and environment collision."
"After you set up a character using the handy wizard tool, the system starts managing states for the character and for each foot individually. It blends between raw animations and pre-engineered IK foot features that help prevent unnatural movement. "
In this way, custom animations are possible, feet stay grounded, movement reacts to speed, and feet can respond to collisions and uneven surfaces. You can test the demo here.
The tool is still in development but it works well as it is. In the future, Arkhipov will share his smart IK aiming system, palm and individual finger collision interaction system, simple facial emotion layer, and animation/procedural/physical "rig sandwich" with the world, so follow him on Reddit.
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