Soul Calibur 2 animations - what's going on?

Snowfly

Every character has their own unique animations and proportions, but then there are characters like Inferno and that floating eye who just mimic the other characters' fighting styles.

Is this real-time motion retargeting? Or do the characters all use a common skeleton, and I'm just imagining that they are proportioned differently?

Kirin

I would guess a common skeleton like in wrestling games. In the upcoming Soul Calibur 3, they boast a feature that allows you to create your own fighter from the ground up and to make things simple, I would think they used a common skeleton reproportioned to fit a certain character for those kind of things.

I could be wrong though but if I was programming a game that allowed that kind of level of customization, I'd do that with the skeleton.

Downsizer

The same as in 99% of the games out there. The skeletons are mixable, hence why the mimic characters can use others animations.

They are canned animations, but have small IK solvers for throws. Each character has basic grab points where other characters animations/skeletons connect to durring those lil IK solver anims. Nothing special. I actually think proportions are dead on for everyone, they just have different stances etc, making it look like they are mal-sized.