We're currently in development of a 2.5D Sidescroller PC game and wanted to know if using just 1 camera is enough for our animations since we only need to have a side view of our characters. Does anyone know if this is possible?

I don't have much experience with 2D animation.

My understanding is that if you have a good 3D animation, you can always convert it into 2D animation. However, there might be a simpler way of doing it.

YEs I believe that it is possible because I saw this video today.
http://www.youtube.com/user/truebones#p/f/6/LXfF0o9o97U

You could easily make that a sprite, however side views of animations that are captured from the front view may work better for you with only one kinect.

Right, though we're not going to convert the them into sprites since even though it is a sidescroller, everything will be modeled in 3D. What i'd like to know is if we capture say a running animation, "sideview" with 1 camera, will the arms, legs on the other side still be captured?

But I guess the best thing to do is try it out, duh, lol. We'll try out the demo and see if it'll work.

No, this won't work with our software. Running motion is too complex to be analyzed automatically with just one 2D view.

One possible solution is to capture it in 3D with multiple cameras and then render it in 2D as needed.

Another solution is to use 2D video as a reference and manually rotoscope it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping