For my Master's Thesis project in 2009 I developed a Locomotion System that can make animated human or animal characters walk and run on any uneven terrain including arbitrary steps and slopes. The Locomotion System gives animators and game programmers maximum flexibility and control while requiring a minimum of work to use. The Locomotion System is developed for the Unity game engine and is free to use with Unity game projects.
The Locomotion System on the Unity Asset Store
Below you can see video demos, get the thesis PDF, and read posts written during development of the project.
Automated Semi-Procedural Animation for Character Locomotion
Master's Thesis
Department of Information and Media Studies
Aarhus University
Rune Skovbo Johansen
May 25, 2009
Automated Semi-Procedural Animation for Character Locomotion
Video demos
A video with voice-over demonstrating the capabilities of the now released Locomotion System, including the new features that enables it to be used with 4-legged animals:
This video explains the motion analysis part of the Locomotion System, which fully automatically calculates speed, direction, timing of foot liftoff and landing, and more:
Reception, influence and citations
I presented the Locomotion System in talks at the Unite 2008 conference where it was later referred to as a crowd favorite, as well as at GDC 2009 where it was enthusiastically received as well.
The Locomotion System was used in the Bootcamp example project that was included with Unity 3.0. I'm not aware if it has been used directly in any shipped games.
The strife retargeting system developed for Half-Life Alyx by Joe van den Heuvel et al was based in large parts (his words) on my 2009 thesis.
I didn't pursue a carreer in academia, but my master's thesis ended up being cited in a fair amount in academic articles, as tracked by Google Scholar: