Happy new year to everyone..

This is something of a preference question I guess, but when you have, say, a walking animation, should you export the animation from the modelling software (or wherever) with a fixed position or should it contain the actual positions of the subject throughout the animation clip?

I can see merits in both, but either way you would need to store, for each frame, the actual position of the person so you can calculate its whereabouts for collision detection and, in the case of static animations, where to place it during the cycle so footsteps don't slide.

Is there an industry standard?

Hello there.

the animation should be inplace mode does not move, so the walk cycle would stay in the centre walk on spot.

or how would you know where it is.

That is an interesting question and it depends on personal preference. I use root bone offset, because it carries additional information.

From what I've seen, most indie games have the animation in-place, with the physics engine controlling player movement and adjusting animation speed. This way the character moves with constant speed (or accelerates, but smoothly) and the animation speed is set so that feet almost don't slide. The player controls will feel nice in fast gameplay and visuals will look good.

On the other hand, imagine a zombie. He is limps and moves forward only half of the time (because he can only move one leg). The movement will not be smooth and the collision volume will have to move according to the limping. It is trivial to animate in 3d package, but not easy to describe in physics. For that reason let's not keep the root bone at zero, but animate it properly. Having this movement offset data in animation clip, you can extract velocity and apply it to physics engine. So it is the reverse situation: instead of physics driving animation speed, now (blended) animation drives physics velocity, allowing much more complex types of walking movement and with 'perfect' sticky feet.

Some tuning might be needed however to make sure the character feels right when controlled - for example this zombie might be terrible unless you blend the animations to allow smoother walking at low speed.

That is an interesting question and it depends on personal preference. I use root bone offset, because it carries additional information.

From what I've seen, most indie games have the animation in-place, with the physics engine controlling player movement and adjusting animation speed. This way the character moves with constant speed (or accelerates, but smoothly) and the animation speed is set so that feet almost don't slide. The player controls will feel nice in fast gameplay and visuals will look good.

On the other hand, imagine a zombie. He is limps and moves forward only half of the time (because he can only move one leg). The movement will not be smooth and the collision volume will have to move according to the limping. It is trivial to animate in 3d package, but not easy to describe in physics. For that reason let's not keep the root bone at zero, but animate it properly. Having this movement offset data in animation clip, you can extract velocity and apply it to physics engine. So it is the reverse situation: instead of physics driving animation speed, now (blended) animation drives physics velocity, allowing much more complex types of walking movement and with 'perfect' sticky feet.

Some tuning might be needed however to make sure the character feels right when controlled - for example this zombie might be terrible unless you blend the animations to allow smoother walking at low speed.

That makes perfect sense, thanks. I've already started to save my animations with root bone offset too.