Problem with layered footsteps when using Animation Blendspace

Hi there,

when i am using an AnimationBlendspace with movementanimations, that contain footsteps, the footsteps get layered over another and it seems like they are getting played multiple times at one step.

The Blendspace key values of the speed are the same as my Characters speed. So it should not be a blending problem.

My Characters speed is 300 and gets set to 600 when i am pressing the sprint key.

How do i fix this ?

1 Like
  1. Make sure that the BS has the Notifies set to “Highest Weighted Animation” so only one animation triggers the footstep notifies

  2. Are your notifies set to “Queued”? Queued can be delayed so it can sound like it’s not right. Setting it to branched will make it more responsive.

Hi there, thanks for your answer ! :slight_smile:

I did what you said and i seems like its a bit better but not fixed.
However, the layering only seems to occur on the walking animation now, the running seems to be fine.

Do you have any other ideas ?

Walking and running are usually in the same blendspace. Are they separate for a reason? Or do you mean you have a sprinting blendspace in addition to a walk/run one?

No, they are in the same Blendspace i added the runanimation to the IdleRun. I just wanted to show where the footsteps in each animations are.

Maybe this short video helps to clarify things.

I thought highest weighted would solve it. And the notifications are set to “Branching Point”?

You could throw a print string in the notification event. See if you get too many of those. If not then the problem is elsewhere.

Also, the notifications might not be placed at the right times. Play with where they’re positioned and see if you get better results.

For some reason I didn’t think to watch the video with the sound on… Derp.

Yeah. It looks like you’re not getting extra footsteps, they’re just not timed right. Pretty sure you need to click on the footstep notification markers and change Category->Event from “Queued” to “Branching Point”.

Hey again, yes, i’ve set them to “Branching Point” before i recorded the video.

Then move the notifications so they match up better with the footsteps and you should be good.

I think the steps in the walkanimation itself are good.

I’ve recorded another video.
Maybe i have to change the Trigger Weight Treshhold ?

I’m fairly certain you need to adjust those notifies. One sounds way too early and the other is hard to tell with the first one so early. I could be wrong but I spent 5 years working on video compression and A/V sync so I have around a 20ms accuracy (I can tell when something is 20ms or more out of sync). It might be worth a try.

It certainly seems to me like you’re only getting one set of footsteps now, at least.

Wow youre fast :smiley:
That might be the case, the footsteps are just rough samples and have to be replaced. So the timings inside the stepsound itself can vary. However, i tried it with only the right foot to make sure there is enough space for the rest of the animation and recorded another video.

That’s firing between the steps. Also, together you can hear that they aren’t equally spaced in time. It should be almost like a metronome. In fact, a shorter sound would make it a lot easier to find the best timing, like a click sound or something. That sounds like he’s on a gravel path or something so it’s hard to know exactly where the step is.

Good idea, i changed the sound to something more precise.

The right foot is a tiny bit too early, maybe 50-100ms. And the left foot is way too late, I’d say a good 200ms or maybe a bit more. You want them to be evenly spaced. So if the animation is 1.0s, the notifications should be 0.5s (500ms) apart.

And move the camera down to the feet where you can see the bottoms make contact with the floor. That’ll help you find the right spots in the timeline.

There is only one footstep that gets played (on the right foot) as you can see in the first 10 seconds. Theres only one notify in the walk animation. I dont know where the second one comes from.

Probably from the highest weighted animation in the BS that has a notify there. I’m pretty sure you should put notifies for both feet in ALL the animations of the BS. Or at least the cardinal directions (if you have 8+ directions you may not need to do it for the diagonal ones, not sure tho).

Sure, i deleted the second one on the left foot just to show you that the first gets doubled automatically. Turns out that every animation had a Rate Scale of 0.0. I set them to 1 and it seems like the behavior is fixed. Anyways, thanks for staying with me !