FINAL IK - Full Body IK, Aim, Look At, FABRIK, CCD IK... [1.0 RELEASED]

Hi Partel, thanks for the awesome asset.

I searched the thread for a problem like I'm having but couldn't find it. My characters look a little bow-legged while using GrounderBipedIK+BipedIK (using Mixamo Fuse characters and animations).

Character with IK enabled; it looks normal except the legs are too wide apart at knees:


Normal animation, without IK, note the legs are much closer together. In motion, it looks much different:


Any tips on what might be causing that or how to adjust it?

 

Hi, EarthLaunch,

Is the Bend Modifier set to "animation" and the Bend Modifier Weight set to 1 for the legs in the BipedIK?

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Thanks Partel,

There is no "legs" among the solvers in the BipedIK. Here is a screenshot of that, with the GrounderBipedIK (from the parent) included: (edit, the BipedIK as shown here gets set on the Grounder at runtime)

 

Could this have to do with the pose when it initializes? I tried starting with a T-pose instead of an idle pose, and it actually made the problem even more pronounced (where the knees are even wider apart):

 

Hi Partel,

Really enjoying Final IK so far. I'm working with the interaction system, though, and was wondering how you would go about transitioning directly between interactions?

For instance, I'd like to start one interaction, get to its trigger point, and then start a second interaction and blend into it with a set of curves from the first. (Like going straight from having my hand on a button to reaching towards the doorknob.)

Right now I either have to wait for the first interaction to stop completely, or there's a visible snap as I interrupt the first interaction and start the second. Any tools to fix this? Thanks!

 

Hi, yes it could have to do with the initial pose. Could you try to rotate the forearms and knees a little bit so that they are slightly bent in their natural bending directions?

Also, I think you'd get better results with FBBIK. In the next version, it will have the option to set iteration count to 0 in which case it will not solve full body, but just IK for the limbs and is almost as fast as BipedIK. If you PM me your invoice nr, I can give you a link to the latest package that already has this feature.

Cheers,
Pärtel

Hi, Samizdat!

Not at this moment, you can only try increasing the FadeInTime of the InteractionSystem component, but the big reason the next update is delayed, is that I'm restructuring and improving the Interaction System quite a lot (introducing Interaction Triggers for easy setup of where exactly the player is able to interact with stuff). I've put it in the list to improve the interaction to interaction transitions as per request.

Best Wishes,
Pärtel

 

Thanks for the tip. By initializing with the running animation (instead of idle or tpose), the legs look how they should during running (shown below), and it doesn't seem to have hurt the other animations. I don't know of a way to edit the joint poses, since I'm using premade animations (Mixamo). This is good enough for now, I'll wait for the public release to try FABRIK...thanks again!

 

Wow STEM System looks phenomenal... so am I right in assuming you will be able to use this system as well to create our own motioncaptures?

 

Hi Partel

Any ideas what might be causing this? I am using Final IK with UMA.

I also notice through debugging that the "OnPause" function is not being called once the player is holding the ball as I would expect (the 'Pause on Trigger' checkbox is ticked within the interaction object component)

 

Are you trying to pick it up with both hands? Automatically picking up with the Interaction System only works with a single effector, because it parents the object to the effector bone and we can't parent stuff to more than 1 game object. If you wish to pick something up with both hands, check out the Interaction PickUp2Handed demo scene. It has been set up for picking up boxes, but I have already improved the demo for spherical objects for another user so if you'd like it now, PM me your invoice nr and I'll give you a link to it.

I can't promise anything, the STEM is still a pre-order, I don't have it yet. But from the looks of it I suppose it could be done.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Question regarding the initialization issue I was having. What would I have to do in code to force it to re-initialize? (This is Animator+GrounderBipedIK+BipedIK.) Just a general idea or hint would help a lot, no need to write it out. I can destroy/etc objects as needed, I'm just unsure exactly where the initialization that causes this is happening.

 

Thank you very much for creating such a great asset!

I am using Full Body Biped IK, with AIM IK, and I was curious - what would be the best way to use Hand Effectors without them affecting the spine, shoulder, or leg positions/rotations? Basically, I would like the hand to reach for it's target, but still be constrained/limited by the shoulder's current position.

 

Yeah I am trying to pick up with both hands... and used the Interaction PickUp2Handed scene as my reference point. I even tried importing a box into the scene to see if I could pick that up and it was the same issue with the box :/

Would love to see the demo for spherical objects! I'll PM my invoice number.

Cheers
Frank

 

Hi, its BipedIK.InitiateBipedIK();

Hi!

The best way to do it is in the next update, where you will be able to set FBBIK iteration count to 0 in which case it will not solve full body, but just the limbs. If you PM me your invoice number, I will give you a link to the latest release candidate.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Hi Partel,

Been enjoying working with Final IK for several months now on two different projects and it's been an awesome package so far. A couple questions:

- Are there reasons to choose BipedIK over FBBIK or vice versa? I'm trying to decide which is the best component to implement for my humanoid character (UMA).

- I notice for reaching up motions, the shoulder positioning vs. arm is a little funky, see screenshot. Is this something solvable with your "ShoulderRotator" script I read about somewhere, or is there a better solution?

Thanks a lot for any help!

Max

 

Hi, Madmaxim, thanks and I'm glad you're enjoying the package..

The only reason to choose BipedIK over FBBIK is performance. The next update however enables you to set FBBIK iteration count to 0 in which case the full body will not be calculated so it will behave similar to BipedIK with almost the same performance. So honestly I am tempted to drop the BipedIK altogether at some point..

To answer the second question, if you just attach the ShoulderRotator.cs to the same gameobject that has the FBBIK, it will solve this problem immediately. It will require FBBIK to solve twice so it has a performance cost though..

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Pärtel, I have been looking at this tutorial on getting stretchy bones into unity:

It's a three part series but very cool how he did it and I'm thinking on implementing it with my characters to help with joints like hips and shoulders, bulging muscles etc.

I'm pretty sure that any IK solution I introduce onto my rig will not translate to my stretchy bones right?

Or do you think that it's possible?

Your pretty much MasterBlaster on this IK rigging stuff... if you say it's not possible I'll take it as gospel...

EDIT: As a side note... like how he uses the distance between two points to scale and or squash a bone object, could a script be placed on a bone object as well and you can define the two points and one as a upnode? Crazy?

 

Hi, Licarell,

Check out

You see that FBBIK automatically adjusts to changing bone scales and proportions. So if you have a script working in LateUpdate that is changing the lengths of the bones, it should be no problem for FBBIK to handle.

If thats what you meant...

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Well... partially.... Here is what I'm doing, Say I have an upper leg bone and hip bone, to adjust the mesh to keep it from pinching I've attached a stretchy bone to both the hip and the leg bone and scripted the stretchy bone to scale when the leg bone rotates up or out. Why it did this is because usually stretchy bones scale transforms are not exposed to fbx so it's not carried through to unity. UMA's bones if I understand correctly are scaled by morphs.

When a bone scale is controlled by another object, in this case the rotation transform of the upper leg bone in max then the animation is then exported to Unity and all transform, rotation, and scale are exposed to the animation timeline and in the fbx export.

My question is will the scripting information that scales the stretchy bone be intact as well so when the IK solution is placed on my character and starts to modify limb placement my stretchy bones will follow?

I kinda don't think so.

 

The IK will not be able to automatically stretch the bones if the effector is out of reach. But, what you could try is this..
Let's say you need Mr Rubberhand to reach for an object that is far away. You could use FBBIK on the character, set hand effector position to the object, and solve. The character will reach as far as FBBIK is able to reach and the character is leaning forward and the arm is completely stretched out. You can then run a script that gets the distance between the hand bone and the target and then simply scales or dislocates the arm bones by that distance.

Or another solution, to calculate the distance between the shoulder and the target, compare it to the length of the arm, and if its greater than a certain factor, scale the bones before FBBIK is solved. That will give you more options than the former solution that only stretches when the target is out of reach.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Without reading the whole thread, can you please tell me if i can now or in the future can do things with this asset like in the old game shadow of the collosus?
There i can climb on a colossus enemy and it looks like the player grab something on the enemy but the enemy is turning and walking along so the player swing sometimes to the left or right until his feet get a place that is good for climbing on.
Also in this game you can grab the feet of a big bird and he fly then with the player and he is swinging or he can grab i big fish that then swims with him. It look like ik combined with gravity maybe a part of the player is a ragdoll?

I would be intereste in this asset if i can do something like that with it and getting to know how from the doc at least where to start to do so.

On youtube you can see him climbing on colossus also the bird or fish thing.
If you wish i can search for it and post the links here.

 

RandAIThor, you should check out the tutorial video that covers picking objects up/locking your characters hands to a box and the interaction system basics. That is where I would start.

At about 6:57 in the Interactive systems video it demonstrates what you may be interested in.

 

This package is incredible, as you probably know

The one thing I REALLy wish it had was the ability to make the IK solvers solve while in edit mode. I have an instance where I have a character hooked up with FBIK and I really wish I could just lay out some simple animations inside the unity editor by animating around the game objects which feed the effectors.

 

Also another question, is there any more or less ideal way to set up which rotation angle is forward per joint?

Unity has the rotation order of ZXY why if I'm not mistaken. Would it be more ideal to set up a character so that it's joints tend to bend around Z axis? So for example change Z would bend and unbend the knee (or other)?

 

Hi, RandAlThor

In Shadow of the Colossus, it is done with a virtual pendulum that is hanging about the point where the character holds on to the bird/colossus. You can read about it from this great paper.

I just made a demo about how you can (partially) map a character to it's ragdoll so it appears to be physically active, while still maintaining its animation. Check out the new video

Thanks!

I am planning to add animating with effectors to Final IK. It will still be done in playmode though, its much safer. The Unity Animation Window can record also in play mode which is awesome .

Hi!

In general there are many "standards" for joint orientations, but Final IK doesn't really care about them. It works in Quaternion space, so it can handle even the old broken Ethan example character that has completely arbitrary joint orientations.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Thank you Partel for that nice video
I now have to collect some money

 

Pärtel, isn't that part of your new system of combining ragdoll with animation, like the video of the zombies chasing your character around and stumbling over themselves...

A quick question does your IK solution also work with twisty bones for ankles, wrists, shoulders and hips?

 

No, thats not it.. In the zombie chasing the ragdolls are following the animation, whereas in this video the animation is following the ragdoll.

Yes, it does
I mean it doesn't automatically twist them, but if you twist them, it doesn't mind.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Just wanted to ask again, does anyone mind if I upgrade FinalIK from Unity 4.3 to Unity 4.5.2? Everybody is anxious about the UGUI so you are going to upgrade to 4.6 at all costs anyway I presume so it should be OK.

 

Those hanging ragdolls look great. Reminds me of the early tech-demos for Force Unleashed with the Euphoria stuff

And I have no objections to FinalIK being upgraded to 4.5

 

Speaking of that demo. Do you have any plans on releasing that tech because it would make life so much easier and is exactly what I've been searching for!

 

I need some help putting a LookAtIK and a FullBodyIK on the same character.

When I have both solvers on the character, and leave them enabled so they auto-initalize and auto update, they work fine, all except the FBIK is solving first, thus the LookAtIK doesn't update dependent on just the FBIK moving.

I tried calling .Disable() on both of them and then manually calling Update() on them in the proper order, but it heavily distorts my character and comes out looking like this:



any ideas?

*edit* just discovered putting the fbik solver first the script execution order fixes it, but would still be curious to know why the manual updating doesn't work

 

Hi! There has been a lot more work with Final IK than I expected, so that currently on hold at least until Final IK is 1.0.

I'm curious too, but cant tell on that information, could you please package me that character and PM a dropbox link or something?

 

Seems like my website and support e-mails are down. I've contacted my web service provider and they are looking into it, sorry for the inconvenience.
[EDIT] fixed now

On a related not, I have submitted 0.4 to the Store, is pending review

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Just downloaded .4 from the asset store. It seems to have broken some of the Behavior Designer integration scripts, but I'm looking forward to checking it out

 

Damn, didn't expect it to be accepted this fast, need to hurry catching up with the User Manual...

Behavior Designer integration probably needs a few minor adjustments to 0.4. Final IK is still in beta and rapidly evolving, so I can't yet always guarantee 3rd party integration integrity when upgrading.

0.4 is probably the biggest update yet, with release notes 3 pages long. There are no big shiny new features, but a lot of fixes and improvements. Here are a couple of most noteworthy:

• New editor for FBBIK that gives you access to pretty much everything without the need for extra scripts like FBBIKSettings and such
• Added Targets to all IK solvers and FBBIK effectors. If you assign a target, the IK position (and rotation) will be automatically linked to the object.
• Added the Pole to AimIK. Pole enables you to fix another axis of the Aim Transform to a certain direction (to IKSolverAim.polePosition, see also IKSolverAim.poleWeight and IKSolverAim.poleTarget).
• Performance improvement of FBBIK (around 20%) and constrained FABRIK (2-3 times).
• LimbIK IKRotation now works the same way as FBBIK effector rotation, matching the orientation of the bone
• FBBIK iteration count can be set to 0, in which case full body solving is disabled and only trigonometric passes will be calculated. This allows for easier optimisation.
• New custom editors and warning system for all IK components
• Interaction System restructured, incorporated InteractionLookAt to the InteractionSystem, added InteractionTrigger for easily defining effector ranges for automatic interaction triggering (undocumented yet, coming soon).
• Playmaker support for all IK components and the Interaction System

New demo scenes:

• FBBIK/Full Body FPS - aiming down the sights of a gun in FPS view
• FBBIK/Pendulum - the demo from the ragdoll video
• FBBIK/Interaction Trigger - demonstrates the new InteractionTrigger component

For the full list and upgrade guide, see the Release Notes or its pdf version in the package.
Now back to updating the manuals...

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Pärtel,

Would it be hard to implement a look-at (area), where an NPC would look at your character when he/she enters into the area... kinda like skyrim, when you pass close to a character they look at you... or when your stopped in a room?

Maybe even a nav mesh as a trigger also?

I guess you could adjust the look-at weight as the player enters a trigger... or nav mesh

 

I haven't updated to the new version yet since I'm in the middle of a project, but can someone tell me the way to solve this warning from the previous version? I'm using Unity 4.5.x.

Code (JavaScript):

1. Assets/RootMotion/FinalIK/IK Solvers/SolverManager.cs(44,71): warning CS0618: `UnityEngine.Animator.animatePhysics' is obsolete: `Use AnimationMode.updateMode instead'

It's just a warning\annoyance but it continues to pop up and be a nuisance. I've tried several fixes but the documentation for the new "updateMode" and all that is super sparse. What should I change the line to in the code?

Thanks!

 

Licarell - I have used FinalIK for that exact purpose - works great!

 

Pärtel, do it! I think everyone who doesn't like updating their Unity should realize that that means not being able to update all the packages as well....!

 

Yes its no problem, just check for the distance of the player form the NPC or use trigger colliders and OnTriggerEnter and OnTriggerExit and perhaps the angle. Then if all conditions are met, smoothdamp in LookAtIK/AimIK weight and if they are not, smoothdamp it out.

You can get rid of it if you change that line (44 in SolverManager.cs) to

Code (CSharp):

1. if (animator != null) return animator.updateMode == AnimatorUpdateMode.AnimatePhysics;

I agree, but sometimes it happens that new Unity releases have showstopper bugs for some people (Unity 4.5 had a big nasty one for Win Phone/Store users) and they need some time to get fixed. But I already did it, FinalIK 0.4 requires Unity 4.5.2

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Hi Partel,

It seems that interface for the FABRIKRoot script has changed from the documentation.

The following picture shows the script from your demo scene as it shows on my computer.



(Regardless of this issue, this is by far the best quality asset I have seen so far)

 

Thanks, Janus

Actually its all the components that have a new look, I'm still working on updating the User Manual to 0.4...

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Wow, they are some impressive patch notes Partel! It's going to be interesting seeing all the Interaction changes, currently I've got lots of Interactions set up (eg. opening doors & picking up items). Might have to do a bit of repairwork after this update, but I'm really looking forward to the 20% FBBIK performance increase.

 

Thank you Partel!

 

Just updated, love the Interaction System updates in the new trigger demo. Will you be doing a tutorial video on the Interaction updates?

 

Hi Partel,

Very happy with FinalIK so far, top notch stuff and great support. Love the package!

I had a few questions I was hoping you could lead me in the right direction.

1) FullbodyIK and grounder: I was wondering if FbullBodyIK is compatible with the grounder components. I'm looking at maximizing performance in my game since at any point I could have up to 30+ AI agents animating and using IK at any point. My question is, can I get the grounder features without using LimkIK for the individual limbs and instead rely on the FullbodyIK component the character is already rigged with?

2) Blending from animation to rag doll: Currently I have my characters set up with a bunch of colliders/joints/rigidbodies places using Unity's rag doll creator. I initially set them as kinematic and then when the character dies, I toggle them all to stop being kinematic in order to make my characters go rag doll. I can currently call the "rag doll" command in the middle of an animation but I feel like it could look better. Is there any way we could say have an "animated rag doll" using final IK? I'd like for the character to play out their death animation but be able to be affected by physics like a rag doll, to create more dramatic and interactive deaths

3) Blending between rag doll/animation. Using FinalIK, I was wondering if I'd be able to blend between a character's rag doll state and back up on their feet somehow. Sort of similar to this:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39

 

Hi, GoGoGadget,
Yes, the interactions will require some repairing, but it will be a lot easier/flexible down the line...

Hi!
Yes, working on the User Manual and tutorials.. The InteractionTrigger feature is very fresh, just out of the oven, which is why I haven't really advertised it yet. I think it will see a bunch of improvements and maybe changes in 0.5.

Hi, Rico and thanks!

1. Yes, that is exactly what the GrounderFBBIK component is for (see it on Ethan in the Grounder demo), it adds to the effector.positionOffsets of your existing FBBIK component.

2, 3. You can blend between ragdoll and animation if you make a ghost ragdoll that is a bone structure identical to your character, but disabled when animation is playing and invisible. Then if you wish to go to ragdoll, you can enable the ghost, set its bone positions and rotations (and velocities) to match those of the animated target and set isKinematic to false. Then in LateUpdate you can simply interpolate each bone's localRotation between the animated and the ragdoll. That is just interpolating between ragdoll and animation, the ragdoll doesn't get physically affected by the animation. For that you could use the package that you referred to or wait (a long time) till I get this off the ground.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Partel,

I was wondering if you could suggest how I might accomplish the following using Final IK.

I currently have FBBIK, Grounder Quadruped and Grounder FBBIK all utilized by my character. He runs across teetering tottering balance beams and drops to a crawl, crawling up the beams, when the beam angle gets too steep for running. I am adding falling debris that rains down from the sky causing the balance beam to tilt. If he falls off he dies. While the character is running, if the falling debris is in range, I want the character to target and swat the debris away with whatever prop I have in his hands before it can hit the beam.

I've been looking at the various demos and have played with Aim Swing, Interaction Trigger and have played with just using the Effector Target options in FBBIK. Since my only controls are tilt right and left on a mobile device, the swatting has to be triggered and executed by the character which I why I was checking out your Interaction Trigger demo.

Do you have any suggestions about how I might accomplish this? Do you think I will need to layer in a swinging/swatting style animation or is this something I might accomplish with just effectors?

Thanks
Allan

 

Hi, sorry if this question is a bit unusual, but I was recommended to buy this asset by many people when I asked how to make a Ragdolly kind of animation, a lot like the Gang Beasts animation style (

about 13 seconds in). I was just wondering how I would accomplish this, or something like it (doesnt have to use ragdoll though).

Thanks a lot