Creating Equipment Weight Dependent Animations
By: Matt Higgins
Supervisor: Chad Walker
Masters of Interactive Technology degree conferred December 13, 2008
Thesis / Project completed: December 9, 2008

This project examines the process for creating animations that exhibits the effect of weapon weight on a character’s movement. Showing the heft of the player’s equipment enhances the player’s immersion in the game and enhances gameplay. Showing the varying weights of weapons through the animations provides players more visual feedback about their equipment as well as more information about the equipment of a potential opponent.

The goal of the project is to test methods of adding this weighting to a character’s animations dynamically without requiring the animator to animate each individual animation set for every weapon. The research shows that either method successfully tested can yield a quality result for the basic movement and idle motions, yet fall short in terms of the attacks.

Download entire thesis (.pdf)