Root Motion Studio

Module: Animation · Category: Motion · Tool ID: RootMotionStudio

Two jobs in one panel. Audit scans a content folder and reports, per AnimSequence, whether its root-motion flag agrees with what the root bone actually does — the mismatch that produces sliding feet and animations that refuse to travel. Generate writes the Distance and Speed float curves that distance-matching and GASP-style locomotion systems consume.

Every number in the table is measured from the animation data model, not inferred from naming conventions.

Root Motion Studio after scanning the Mannequin locomotion folder: 11 animations audited, 4 flagged 'Root moves, RM flag off; Loop seam gap' with their measured planar distance and loop gap, the in-place clips reporting OK.

Every animation in the project, with its root motion measured rather than guessed from the name.

When to use it

• Auditing a locomotion set before wiring up distance matching or GASP
• Hunting the classic mismatch: root-motion flag on, root bone never moves (character plays in place)
• The inverse: root travels but the flag is off (character animates away from its capsule)
• Generating Distance / Speed curves in bulk instead of by hand per sequence
• Checking loop seams: how far the root is from where it started

What it isn’t for

• Don’t treat a large loop gap as a defect on traveling clips. A genuine walk-forward should end far from where it began. The threshold exists to be raised for traveling motion.
• Don’t use it to author root motion. It measures and annotates existing animation; it does not create or retarget root tracks.

Opening the tool

1. Open the EQLabs Hub and search for root motion (or browse to Animation → Motion).
2. Click the tool card.
3. Pick a Content Folder, set thresholds, click Scan.

Scan settings

Setting	Notes
Content Folder	Folder to scan for AnimSequences. Browse picks from the Content Browser folder tree
Planar (XY) distance	Measure horizontal travel only, ignoring vertical bob — the distance-matching convention. Uncheck to include vertical motion in Distance, Speed and loop gap
Motion Epsilon (cm)	Total root travel at or below this counts as “no root motion” when classifying a flag-on clip
Loop Gap Threshold (cm)	Loop-seam gap above this is flagged

On Planar vs full 3D

Leave Planar on for locomotion. Distance matching cares about ground distance travelled; a jog cycle’s vertical bob would otherwise inflate the distance curve and desynchronise the match. Switch to full 3D only when vertical travel is the point — jumps, climbs, vaults.

On the Loop Gap threshold

The loop gap is the first-to-last root offset. For an in-place idle it should be near zero. For a walk-forward it is the stride distance, by design. Set the threshold to whatever “shouldn’t have moved” means for the folder you are scanning, and expect traveling clips to exceed any small value — that is not a bug in the clip.

Results table

Column	Source
Animation	The AnimSequence
Frames	IAnimationDataModel::GetNumberOfFrames()
RM Flag	Authored root-motion flag — UAnimSequence::HasRootMotion() (i.e. bEnableRootMotion)
Distance	Cumulative root travel in cm, planar or 3D per the toggle
Loop Gap	First-to-last root offset in cm
Issue	Classification from flag, distance, loop gap and thresholds

Issue classifications

Issue	Meaning	Typical consequence
RM enabled, root bone not animated	bEnableRootMotion is set but there is no animated root track	The clip plays in place; the movement system gets nothing
RM flag on, no root motion	Flag is on, but total travel is at or below Motion Epsilon	Same symptom, different cause — the track exists but doesn’t move
Root moves, RM flag off	The root travels, but the flag is off	Motion is baked into the pose and ignored by the movement system — the mesh drifts from the capsule
No animated root track	No root track at all	Fine for additive/in-place clips; a problem for locomotion
Loop seam gap	First-to-last offset exceeds the threshold	Visible pop at the loop point — or an expected stride on a traveling clip

The summary line reports the whole picture at a glance:

Anims: 42 | Root track: 38 | RM flag on: 31 | Issues: 7

Generating Distance / Speed curves

Control	Default	Notes
Distance Curve Name	Distance	Cumulative distance curve
Speed Curve Name	Speed	Per-second speed curve
Generate Distance/Speed Curves	—	Writes both curves to selected rows, or every scanned anim when nothing is selected

Selection semantics are worth internalising: with no rows selected, Generate writes to everything that was scanned. That is convenient for a whole locomotion folder and surprising if you meant to do one clip.

Both names must be non-empty and must differ — the tool refuses otherwise rather than writing one curve over the other.

Sequences with no animated root track are skipped, not failed, and listed in the report.

Transaction and saving

The whole generation runs under one transaction, so a single Undo reverts the entire batch. But:

Curves are written to the assets in memory. You must save the assets to persist them.

Verify in Persona before saving if you want to see what landed.

Export Report

Export Report writes the current audit as an EQLabs report in JSON, CSV and HTML under Saved/EQLabs/Reports. Run Scan first — there is nothing to export otherwise, and the tool says so rather than writing an empty file.

The generation step also produces its own report recording what was written and what was skipped.

Workflow: auditing a locomotion set

1. Point Content Folder at the locomotion folder.
2. Leave Planar (XY) on.
3. Set Loop Gap Threshold high enough that traveling clips don’t flood the results.
4. Scan, then sort by Issue.
5. Fix genuine flag mismatches in the source assets.
6. Select the clips that need curves — or select nothing to do all of them.
7. Generate Distance/Speed Curves.
8. Save the assets.
9. Export Report for the record.

Tips and gotchas

• Generate with nothing selected writes to every scanned anim. Select deliberately.
• Curves are not saved automatically. Unsaved assets lose the curves on editor close, which reads as the tool having done nothing.
• A large loop gap on a traveling clip is correct. Raise the threshold instead of “fixing” the animation.
• Motion Epsilon only applies to flag-on clips. It is what separates “flag on but genuinely static” from real motion.
• Planar vs 3D changes Distance, Speed and loop gap together. Re-scan after toggling; don’t compare numbers across modes.
• Undo works, but only until you save. After saving, reverting means restoring the assets from source control.

Related tools

• Motion Cleanup & Foot Locking — fix sliding feet once the root motion is correct
• Motion & Physics Sync Engine — keep physics in step with root motion
• Animation Auditor — broader animation health, where this is root-motion specific
• Anim Notify Manager — the other bulk annotation pass over a locomotion set