Better way of handling one shot action animations

[Rytelier]

Describe the project you are working on

An action 3D game

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

I'm facing a problem with playing action animations, like attack, dodge, stagger, etc. The AnimationTree doesn't have functionality to have it handled in simple and smooth way, I have to use workarounds. First - all common solutions were not suitable for my needs.

• Making action animations as state machine state was out of question as I needed to make transition from and to all the other states.
• Chaining one shot nodes one after another would be very messy when implementing like 20 action animations.

What I settled on is one OneShot node where the animation in the AnimationNodeAnimation is replaced in a script. Script checks if animation ended by checking the active parameter. Then faced problems that needed to be worked around:

Problem: I faced is that when chaining action animations, where next one plays in middle of current, there would be no smooth transition. Workaround: added another animation node and blend2 node, and made action animations switch the active node, where blend2 node would smoothly blend transitions through a script.

Problem: animation events would stack from the second node even though it wasn't enabled by blend (that's when chain sequence is starting, where animation start from first frame). Workaround: make an empty animation clip that is couple seconds long and add it to the inactive action node.

Problem: when calling an action right at the end of animation, the OneShot node would just go disabled when setting the seek position, making whole action canceled. Workaround: adding a delayed call that forced the one shot node to go active again.

It was all hard to figure out, as the tree doesn't provide simple functions to suit my approach of actions.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Solution #.1: State tree based actions

• Add function to play state machine animation instantly with crossfade.

animTree.Play(string path, float crossfadeTime)

• Add exit node which would allow to call script when animation ends.

Either something like override void OnNodeEnter (attached to the node) or a signal

Solution #.2: Add dynamic animation node.

• It would allow to play animation like one shot, with script setting the animation clip, where the next animation would crossface with previous one.
• Also allow plugging in blendSpaces.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

State machine controlled actions: Dynamic animation node: similar structure as OneShot except has additional functionality I mentioned above.

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

As mentioned before, the workaround is complicated.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

It will help with clean animation tree setup with straightforward actions instead of having messy solutions or workarounds.

[TokageItLab]

Which version of this are you using? I made a modification to some Nodes when I added sync recently (https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/62623), so it may be that workaround using Oneshot or Transition is working.

[TokageItLab]

Now StateMachine play() teleports to any state. The remaining problem is that there is no crossfade, but I think that problem can be solved in the following way:

Provide only two Attack States. Connect them to the normal State. This should look like a triangle.

At the start and end of the attacking combo, the combo should go back and forth between the Normal State and the Attack State.

During the combo, the animation should loop between the two Attack States with changing dynamically assigned animations depending on the attacking action.