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Fredrum's avatar
Fredrum
Expert Protege
10 years ago

Ik Solutions for player character

Hi All,

I have recently started to learn about UE4's animation system and now want to start setting up a player character.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to approach rigging up an interactive player character? I want to use the Rifts positional tracking, in standing position, to move the avatars head and allow for things like crouching. I also want to add IK controlled hands.

Is this possible to do with UE4 existing IK system? I would ideally like my characters spine to be more flexible than a 2-bone ik but I believe that is all you can do with UE4 built in IK?

Would anyone have any advice?

Cheers
Fred

2 Replies

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  • getnamo's avatar
    getnamo
    Honored Guest
    Check out my Leap Motion plugin, it's an MIT licensed plugin which contains convenience content with IK for a rigged character. If you do not have a leap motion it will still lean the character with your head position. It will blend animations when hands are not tracked and it also has the head properly split from the body mesh while still casting a shadow so you do not get clipping from seeing through your head. You can take that and change the mesh and collision assets to suit your needs while still retaining the binds.

    UE's IK system is very flexible btw, and you can use long chains with FABRIK to figure out final posture. All of the IK stuff happens in the animation blueprint (BasicCharacter_AnimBlueprint) found here.

    Hope that helps!
  • Fredrum's avatar
    Fredrum
    Expert Protege
    That's really great thank you so much! I will get that installed and check out your rig and borrow liberally then! :)
    So far I have just been fiddling with the 2-bone IK in UE and testing some rig ideas in Maya, which I am more comfortable with. Plan is to then try to implement the Maya rig in UE (knowing UE's limitations, or I will know them soon).
    Great to learn about the FABRIK too!
    Damn having a day job it makes progress so slow.

    Cheers
    Fred