How to animate a First Person Run, Walk and Sneaky Walk Cycles

Well I was at this job interview the other day, when the interviewer asked me about the experience I had animating sequences from a first person perspective. You know, the view you have of things through your own eyes, like in games in the shooter genre.

While I was trying to explain myself in this complicated language about "splines" and how many animations I've done on this matter, I finished my answer with a "You know?, I´d better show you some samples".

It wasn't like I couldn't explain myself at all, but being myself more of a "visual" type of guy, at some point I felt like trying to explain how the red color looks like to a blind guy who has never seen.
So after the interview and when I came back home, I decided to do a brief sample of these three cycles from fpv; Run, Walk and Walk Sneaky.

Trying to represent the feeling of how you watch your surroundings from this view is a VERY DIFFICULT thing to achieve. I´d say like a level 11 thing on a 1 to 10 scale.
Actually, even when there are A LOT of first person shooters out there, I've only seen this accurately represented in DICE's "Mirror's Edge". All other fps games seem to me like the character is either "floating" or just trying to keep balance over a bicycle while walking.

I sent these animations the very same day I was interviewed, so to keep the whole topic fresh. But while doing it, I decided to give them a more scientific approach on how to do them rather than just trying to achieve the feeling by putting key frames here and there.

So in the end, here is how the position splines (rotation ones following) should look like on your 3D's application graph editor:

The segment goes from f0 thru f30 (1 sec) with each key frame set on f0, f7, f15, f22 and f30.
Note how the curve tangents on the green curve (Y) fix the default setting (spline) of the application. That´s in order to sustain balance of the body while lifting the passing leg. Blue curve (Z) represents the bouncing of the body at each step (or contact pose with the ground). Finally, the red curve (X) represents your forward progression, from point A to B. This should go linear during the whole walk segment, meaning if your walk goes from point A to B in 6 seconds, you should only key frame a straight line between f0 and f180.

Now onto the rotation ones:
The Green curve represents rotation from right to left and so on. The Blue one a little rotation clock and counter clock wise. The red one is the up and down bouncing of the head. The end result simulates a nice and subtle rotation of the head in the form of 8 shaped arcs. Again the key frames are fixed on f0, f7, f15, f12 and f30.

You can also add a bit camera shaking with a modifier if you want, but keep the values of the shaking as low as possible.

Although this is not necessary, it will be like putting the cherry over the pie.

Here are the settings I used for the video reference (3ds Max 2011).

Seed: 1
Frequency: 0.05
Fractal Noise: On
X, Y, Z Strength set to 2.0

I will be covering the Run and Sneak Walk variations in a later post.