There's a difference between looking at people in that daily, casual sort of way, and actually anolyzing how they move. I animate, so I speak from experience. Unless you are talking about a seriously obsese male, their balance profile is like a triangle on its point; the major mass of the male is across the chest and through the shoulders. It makes rapid changes in direction easier.....a slight tilting of the body, and the mass pulls the rest of it along. Women are closer to a double triangle, points meeting around the navel. You get a variance in gait depending on which triangle is dominant in a woman; equal or slightly greater upper mass and you have a more dynamic motion pattern. If the hip triangle is the larger, then there is a more 'rooted' appearance to the gait. Put together, it can (depending on what action is going on), make the male look either off balance or raring to go, and the female calmer, more prone to take a guard stance.

This doesn't begin to take in the variations time inflicts. A virgin girl has a different gait after she has a child, and it has nothing to do with bubble butts or other appendages. It has to do with the ligaments at the front of the pelvis. During pregnancy, hormones dissolve any bone that may have formed and loosens the ligaments holding the front of the pelvic girdle closed (and those stabilizing it at the spine). The sides of the pelvis spread apart to allow room for the baby to grow, and to have enough space at the opening in the floor of the pelvis for a full term infant to pass through. After the birth, it tightens back up........but never like it was. And subsequent pregnancies just add more separation. The sides of the pelvis rotate outward, and as the hip joint is part of them, the legs move apart. The angle of the hip changes, creating the pregnant waddle (in combination with the extra mass sticking out, of course).

Children have their own unique patterns. Masswise, thing of twin poles close together. Structurally and density wise, they are the same almost right up to puberty.


And none of that includes cultural baggage about what is 'appropriate' for the genders. What clothing is in style also affects things.

If gamesas -does- have a mocap studio, then it would be well worth it to have multiple capture actors. When you use the same animation files over and over, you get to recognize them very quickly. And get bored with them.

While men and women are structured a bit differently, and therefore walk a bit differently, this is not how different gender animations end up looking in games that implement them. Sure, if the developers have the time to add very subtle differences due to distribution of mass, etc., that's great, I would love that.
Realistically, though, what this usually means - even if the developers intend otherwise - is some pretty blatant stereotyping, and the sort of thing I don't want anywhere near my Elder Scrolls games.

I "this" Dale B's latest post.

Also, seeing that they had the common sense to reinstitute sixually dimorphic movement animations in Fallout 3, I am confident that we'll have them again in Skyrim

All this is null anyways, I'm fairly sure men and women use different bone structures in the game, so new animations need to get made anyways. I think what happened in oblivion is just that they animated them to look the same.

The degree of sway while walking depends on specific family traits. On my father's side of the family everyone has swaying hips, on my mothers none do. I think that there is a bit more for women than men, but when you put armor on someone it will be almost unnoticeable. Most of the difference people see when walking is due to shoe and clothing design. I guess you could have slightly different animations, but overall I do not see any reason why they should bother.

One problem with the one size fits all animation thing is that it seems to cause problems with the female model itself.

Thank you!

Men and women walk completely differently, and you did an awesome job of explaining the hows and whys.

Even though I play mostly in first person, I switch to third when traveling long distances. I'd love to see more gender-appropriate animations and postures. Someone mentioned that women would only walk differently if they were wanting to flaunt/get attention, but it's about differences in skeletal structure, muscle mass, etc.

You're welcome.

Actually, this was a -very- simplified explanation. There are lots of modifiers. In men, muscle density can have an enormous effect; you'll notice you never see a fast bodybuilder. The bulk simply gets in the way, and while you may be stronger with greater muscle mass, you run into the issue that above a certain size, a muscle will begin to slow down in its action due to the sheer amount of tissue that has to react. In very extreme cases, it is possible to have muscle so thick that movement is almost wavelike, due to the chemical delay of the existing nerves stimulating that much tissue. 'Muscle bound' is a very real state, and over development can create unique movement issues, particularly with very heavy weapons and the -speed- with which you can wield it. You can see examples at SCA events, where a 'Conan' type gets taken apart by a smaller opponent.....in many cases a woman, using a smaller blade and taking advantage of the speed differential to pick the opponent apart one bit at a time...

For women, one of the bigger modifiers is briast size. For small builds, they don't have much in the way of mass displacement....but they could be sensitive enough that the owner gets in the habit of avoiding them, leading to one of the more common patterns that people associate with females; namely, the arms being angled out when running, instead of being held close to the ribs. Ladies with larger builds have the added penalty of the actual briast mass shifting from side to side, which amplifies the twisting effect of the arms akimbo. What establishes the uniqueness in motion patterns is =how= the individual adapts. And none of this gets into issues of limb length to torso length, actual bone structure, any injuries the character may have, etc.....

Oh, and armor doesn't 'hide' such things for the most part. In fact, the extra weight exacerbates the reaction when a body is moved and tilted around, so in many cases those little gait issues become very noticeable. And if it is not flexible enough to allow for the compensating actions, you can get some =very= exaggerated motions. Well, get a hand weight and put 6lbs on it; that is about what a longsword of old steel could weigh. Get away from walls and breakables, then try some simple movements while swinging the 'blade' around. Just step forward and swing down, spin backwards while swinging out, etc. That will give you an idea of what swinging a single handed longsword around actually does to your stance and gait. And even then the effect isn't exact, as you don't have that weight distributed over the length of a blade. A 5lb weight and a 5lb weight that's 36" long are two very different things.