Create accurate root motion for a dive anim?

Hi guys, I’m trying to get my dive animation working in unreal 4. This animation feeds into a looping fall animation.

The problem is, I’m having trouble animating the root in Maya and having it stay level with the character. As you can see from this image, I need to make the root follow the character accurately but its bothersome getting the root to stay aligned in the right areas while interpolating between frames. During the animation, the root is swaying all over the place! D:

35410-1.png

So so a few frames later its down here, of course i could move it and put another key there but im not actually sure where its supposed to be during this animation :confused: Is it supposed to follow th hips and inherit the curves from that too? or the feet ? I have no idea. I’d usually just key it along with the hips if I’m doing a normal surface animation but this rotating one with z axis fall is a bit hard for me. any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Instead of animating with the Pelvis control as the main character mover, take a look at the “offset_anim” control at the bottom of the rig. That has a more ideal pivot, similar to the root control you have pictured. But it’ll control the whole character from that pivot.