Merging FPS Camera and Character Animations

Hi everyone,

I made my own FPS controller, downloaded a 3D character model including animations and added my controller to it. Then I started bumping into several issues.

1. I had a single camera attached to my character, but since my character has animations when moving, the two (camera and character) overlap and I start seeing my character's head in the way depending on the animation which is played (thus depending on the direction I move). I adjusted this in a very rough and tedious way: a script which moves my camera in different positions with respect to the character depending on the movement (thus depending on the animation). I am quite sure this is not how the professionals do it in industry.. I saw that UFPS (in a Packt book) and a guy in a video tutorial (

) introduce a second camera, but animations are not discussed. How can this be solved? What are industry standards regarding FPS cameras and animations? I cannot find this anywhere, people only focus on the basic controller and they never show examples of when you actually have an animated model!

2. My second problem is the following. If I choose to follow the approach explained by the previous linked video (meaning that my gun is a child of my second camera), how will my character animations follow the gun once I introduce a fully animated 3D character? Should I use IK? Again, what are industry standards for this?

If anything that I asked is not clear, please tell me and I will add some pictures (or even a video) to this discussion!

Thanks in advance,

mitoand9