Dynamic Aim/up Down Animations?

Do you know about matrices?

You could seperatly adjust the model matrix according to your aiming.

And try looking at Skeletal animation, it can also be done via shaders.

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What kind of library/engine are you using?

I suppose this is a little bit a trial and error process.You can figure out a strategy but you never know how good it looks before you have implemented.

The first thing I would try is to have a separate basic weapon animation and shot animation.

The basic weapon aim could have different segments for "taking out the weapon", "transition all the way from aiming up to aiming down", "reload", etc..

When the weapon fires I would override the wrist rotation with data from the shot animation.

Also, if you want the animation to be more rich and involve the arm and forearm you could examine which kind of rotation the recoil causes on those bones and apply it manually.

On my engine in pseudocode this would look about like this and should be executed at each frame.

Apply_kf_animation(name=up_down_aim, frame = somelinearfunction(aiming_angle), root = character_root);  // resets to the aiming position
if (time_from_trigger < animation_time) {
   Apply_kf_animation(name = wrist_shot, frame = some_exponentialdecay(time_from_trigger), root = character_wrist).
   Apply_rotation(joint = arm, axis = ?, some_exponentialdecay(time_from_trigger) * RECOIL_ON_ARM);
   Apply_rotation(joint = forearm, axis = ?, some_exponentialdecay(time_from_trigger) * RECOIL_ON_FOREARM);
}

Again, I dont' know if this is good enough but is the first thing I would try.

Then much depend on what your engine has to offer.

If your engine has Ik, just apply the movement to the handgun and let it figure out the rest.

Any books, links, hints or pointers on the subject are appreciated.

It might be useful to know the libraries or engines you are using.

Without knowing details about your system, my thoughts are:

* Subdivide the screen to x grid zones (probably 9) to detect the reticle or mouse location. Use that to figure out where to point the arrow.

* Use animation blending or blend trees or whatever your system names it to make it pretty. The animator is likely making a base idle animation with tiny motions, an animation for swinging the weapon while walking, another animation for swinging the weapon while running. Add in another set to blend in to move between the current mouse location. Perhaps those would be blend left, blend right, blend up, blend down.

* Alternatively, using a floating position for 'forward' you can use a joint on your model as your forward direction. Lerp that coordinate toward whatever zone matches it. If they're in the upper-left zone, lerp the joint to that coordinate. If they move the mouse to the lower right corner, lerp there. If they move in large arks you'll be lerping all through the zone. This could work well for a large number of zones.

* Alternatively, if your model is using IK already figure out the bone they're using and do basically the same thing, moving your position and letting physics solve it.

* Alternatively, rotate the model directly.