How did they do this?

Looks to me like it's roughly just 'springs' that try to force the model to whatever the animation cycle says (with the devil being in the details I'm sure).

For the rag-doll type effects, I imagine they're identifying that the character has undergone heavy force (or is significantly out of position) and therefore they turn down/off the springs that keep the character in the animation pose. Then to stand up, they return to a default position (you can see the character kind of spread its arms and legs out in a generic fashion on the ground) and then they run the standing animation.

I'm pretty sure they have normal 3d bone-type animations that drive the basic movement and not real physics. The springs don't look very springy either, more like motors that return to the default position.

Unfortunately, I'll bet it takes quite a bit of tweaking to get something like that working.

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Original post by jdindia Looks to me like it's roughly just 'springs' that try to force the model to whatever the animation cycle says (with the devil being in the details I'm sure). For the rag-doll type effects, I imagine they're identifying that the character has undergone heavy force (or is significantly out of position) and therefore they turn down/off the springs that keep the character in the animation pose. Then to stand up, they return to a default position (you can see the character kind of spread its arms and legs out in a generic fashion on the ground) and then they run the standing animation. I'm pretty sure they have normal 3d bone-type animations that drive the basic movement and not real physics. The springs don't look very springy either, more like motors that return to the default position. Unfortunately, I'll bet it takes quite a bit of tweaking to get something like that working.

I'm already doing all of that but I don't think it's possible to get it to work like that since the feet will collide with the ground which will make the character bounce and move in an undesirable manner. They must be doing something different then I am.

Well, I assume their character's main body is pinned to the world so as not to fall over. The animation just drives the skeleton with 'springs', kind of like "you want to be here, so try to be if you can". And I say springs, but it can't be the normal f=-kx type springs since you don't want oscillation. If the feet hit the ground, they should then just push slightly back, causing a bit of leg bend. Remember, the main body is fixed, so it's not going anywhere. If the main body is pinned at roughly the same height as the character walking, I don't see the issue.

You'd have to move the main-body according to player input and you'd have to be smart about jumping and getting knocked around since you want it to react accordingly. In other words, the main body can't really be totally fixed at a certain height. I suspect they may even have some simple capsule type physics object that you can't see that determines where the main body tries to be, which is controlled by player input.

looks like they have a standar ragdoll controller (capsule) attached to the character, with also a ragdoll controller, attached to the capsule (by the hip?, or the capsule bottom?). So you will have two ragdoll states, one derived from the forward kinematic (the character animation), and one that is inverse kinematic (the ragdoll collisions and context sensitive moves, and animation). then you blend between the two.

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Original post by oliii looks like they have a standar ragdoll controller (capsule) attached to the character, with also a ragdoll controller, attached to the capsule (by the hip?, or the capsule bottom?). So you will have two ragdoll states, one derived from the forward kinematic (the character animation), and one that is inverse kinematic (the ragdoll collisions and context sensitive moves, and animation). then you blend between the two.

I don't think they have a character attached to a character controller since there is one part where they walk the character in to some boxes and they don't seem to be effected by anything other then the character.