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Easing and Skewing - 2D Sprite Animation

Discussion in 'Animation' started by v2-Ton-Studios, Nov 30, 2013.

  1. v2-Ton-Studios

    v2-Ton-Studios

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2012
    Posts:
    238
    (Friendly FYI... I sent @Unity3D a tweet, but haven't heard back. Just curious, do you not answer questions on your twitter feed?)

    Overall I'm loving the 2D updates and the new animation capabilities - great work! But, I can't seem to find two key features: Skewing and Easing. I know, whinny customers... never happy :). Very possible I've just missed them, if so hopefully you can point me in the right direction!

    Some context...

    Just finished the animation found in the link below (shown via a video recorded with my phone). It was created from a bunch of character pieces (arms, torso, legs, etc) all placed together as a "doll" and then moved between different poses -- I'm sure many of you do something similar.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/6zai6ry14hk1rd2/WP_20131128_001.mp4

    Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, but would like to leverage Skewing and Easing to polish it more.

    Skewing, would help me give the character a more natural forward lean on certain frames (currently I rotate his head and torso, which looks a little jerky).

    Easing, would allow me to hold the "full stride" positions, giving the animation a bit more of an action / cartoony feel. I can kinda/sorta replicate this by duping the relevant keyframe, but the result looks hacky.

    Does Unity 4.3's editor support these two features? Where can I find documentation on them? At first glance the below link seems promising wrt easing...

    http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/UsingDopesheet.html

    ... but it's unclear what these settings do. In practice, setting them seems to have no effect. Are they broken? Perhaps I'm just not understanding how to use them? Is there additional documentation I can read, the above link is rather sparse?

    Ideally there would be a set of Easing Functions, as are present in a tool like Expression Blend...

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/vityjyjdxc6hs70/EasingWithBlend.png

    Thanks in advance for any help! Cheers!