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

Hi Partel,

Bought final IK in the sale. Just need to learn how to use it now.

I have a multi armed character similar to this - http://mortalkombat.wikia.com/wiki/Goro
There is also a character with 6 arms.

Do you have any pointers on how to implement final IK in these cases.

Thanks

doc

 

Hello, I have 2 questions, first one is, how can i download the latest version to use it in Unity 4.6.7 (i have pro for this and not 5 yet), the second is , if you guys have any skateboarding demo or a way to use the left foot to be attached to the skate and the other in a separate way...

 

Hi!

Please try this webplayer demo. Select "Bot" on the top left corner. It's the bot from the Angy Bots with the same animations and using the GrounderIK component to take care of vertical foot placement correction. So just animate your legged vehicle and the Grounder will make sure the feet remain grounded without interfering too much with the look and feel of the animation.

Fully procedural walking animations can also be done, but that requires a lot of scripting and tedious tweaking.

Thanks! I really can't wait to see what you've been up to

Hi and thanks!

That is weird, I have not seen this before. Can you tell me more about how you are using the FBBIK component. Do you just have it on attached to the character like normal or are you updating it manually or adding/removing it via code? It is weird because I can't think of a reason how the "solver" reference in IKEffector would go missing.

Best Regards,
Pärtel

 

Hi!

Yes, take a look at the "LimbIK Bend Goal" demo scene. Basically just set the "Bend Modifier" to "Goal". Then a "Bend Goal" slot appears that you can assign to a Transform that you want the limb to bend towards. Also make sure "Bend Modifier Weight" is > 0.

Hi and thanks for the purchase!

Yes, for example you can usethe FullBodyBipedIK component to solve the full body and 1 pair of arms. That you can use as the dominant pair of arms. You can then attach LimbIK components to the other arms, but you'll need to change one thing. By default LimbIK updates before FBBIK. In this case we want it the other way around, because if full body is solved after the other arms, their hands will not be where they were solved to anymore.

So just add the IKExecutionOrder.cs component to the character and add the IK components to the "IK Components" in this order: { FBBIK, LimbIK, LimbIK, LimbIK... }

Hi!
If you send me your invoice number to support@root-motion.com, I will give you a link to the latest 4.6 version.
I don't have specifically a skateboarding demo, but you can just duplicate your foot bone, parent it to the skateboard and assign it as the target for the left foot effector of the FullBodyBipedIK component. Then weigh in effector weights when you play the scene. If you play a simple running animation I imagine the player will appear to be skating with the other foot kicking in some more speed.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Thanks for the quick reply Pärtel! I've just bought Final IK and I'm looking forward to play around with it. It'll be a few days before I have time to really dive in though. I'll let you know how it goes once I've spent some time working with it.

 

Thanks for the reply Partel.

I will try what you said.

Thanks again

 

Hi there,

We are currently working on a pvp game and i am a long time 3ds max user so i just want to know if i really need this for our game if we are doing all our animations in 3ds max?

Our character controller is custom made and it is third person.

If i understand it correctly it is more for people who want to animate inside unity right?

In a word what are the main advantages for us?

 

I think that's not what it is meant for. It compliments classic FK animations that you do in your 3D application by adding IK features on top of it and doing things like grounding the feet of running characters to the floor, stopping a punch animation at the point of impact, make your char flinch back when hit in a dynamic way and many more things. As far as I know it does in fact not provide features to create new keyframed animations in unity itself. So the only way you are creating animations only using FinalIK is by scripting the movement of IK solvers to create fully procedural animations (or maybe by using rigidbodies to drive solvers but I'm starting to make wild guesses here).

 

I'm working with a custom model with proper limb and weighting but i can't get the knees to bend the right direction with the full body biped IK script. Should i be using this script in this instance or should I be using a different script. Also if possible i would like to continue using the FBBIK, but redirect the direction of the knees bending. Also this will be a powerhouse asset in my collection! Thanks for being awesome!!

 

It's very likely something wrong on my end!

So I start with Full Body Biped IK activated, and Grounder FBBIK disabled.
I play an animation on my character (which is him jumping off of the top bunk of a bunk bed, if I have grounder on at this point his legs look weird upon landing).
Once the animation is complete (which involves Apply Root Motion in the animation to move him) I then enable the Grounder script (and also a nav mesh agent, don't know if this is related).
Everything then carries on and works fine, the grounder script seems to more or less work perfectly.
However then randomly, and I haven't found a way to reproduce yet, although it happens within a few minutes every time I run the game, I get the runtime error I mentioned.
I'm not messing with enabling / disabling any Final IK scripts after that initial sequence.

Could it be simply because that grounder script is disabled at first?

The errors don't seem to have any consequences either, except filling up my console. The game still works...

Any help with this weird issue would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Apologies, I just double checked and I am turning off both Grounder and Full Body Biped IK every time I perform an animation on the player model (for cutscene for example). Is that something I shouldn't be doing? Or is there perhaps a safe way of doing it?

If so I could always use a "stunt double" for cut scenes and disable the entire player while they're playing, that should be okay right?

Cheers!

 

Hey I'm interested in buying FinalIK, it looks like a great asset, had a question about whether some of the techniques in this GDC talk were applicable with FinalIK? Specifically how he uses curves and easing between very few keyframes to create most of his animations (starts at around 5 min into the video). Would you be able to bring in key poses like that into Unity from a 3D package like Maya and then control the curves to create a variety of animations? Or is this package more meant to work with full animations coming in the .fbx (or whatever) file?

I think his "surveyor wheel" technique is pretty genius to make sure the character's walk/run animations always match up with his speed! That will have to be it's own script of course but I just want to know if that method will work okay with FinalIK, as well as having general control over interpolation.

 

Hi!
Yes, what Martin_H kindly pointed out. Also, pease take a look at this FAQ page for more information.

Hey, no worries. FBBIK samples the pose of the character in Start to know which way the limbs should be bent, so you just need to rotate the knee bones a bit so the little blue arrows (visible in the Scene view when you have the FBBIK gameobject selected) on the knees face forward. Please take a look at this video (from 1:50) to see how it can be done.

Hi again, thanks for the extra information.
Could you try, what if you just set FBBIK weight to 0 instead of disabling both FBBIK and Grounder, does the problem remain?

Hi!

This technique is not featured in Final IK, but should you implement it on your own, there should be no problem applying Final IK procedures on top of it.

Actually, you can just animate your character in a few keyframes, then have Mecanim play that animation very slowly, it would still interpolate smoothly between the poses.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Do you mean I can use Mecanim transitions to create the animations? So if I brought in 4 frames for a run cycle, I could have each pose as a Mecanim state and transition between them? I wasn't sure if I would have full control over the interpolation and timing of that, and whether it would get unweildy. Although mecanim layers would probably help.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

I realize this conversation isn't directly about FinalIK (which I'll be buying soon!) so if you want to reply in a PM or something that's fine.

Thanks.

 

What would you gain from that and what would the drawbacks be? Make sure you really have a usecase where this fiddly technique gives you a real benefit. I'll admit I don't know much about animation but to me this sounds like the drawbacks outweigh the positives by far for standard tasks like running.

 

Hello Partel, thank you for this asset.

I did encounter the same problem as EpicIndustries, it consistently happens on the demos where FBBIK is used e.g. Grounder, Boxing, Driving etc when scripts are recompiled and reloaded.

Steps to reproduce:
Create empty project
Import FinalIK from asset store
Load the Grounder demo scene
Open any attached script: for example the camera script
Add a comment or any other valid code change so Unity triggers recompile
Tab back into unity and wait for a few seconds for recompile to finish

You should see null reference exceptions being spammed into log due to solver reference being null, in addition to the IK script not working.

That said if FBBIK isn't present, for example AimIK, Biped or FABRIK demos, the bug does not appear but I'm not familiar enough with the framework to say if FBBIK is the actual culprit.

I hope this will help track it down, recompiling is a significant timesaver, hopefully it is easily fixed.

 

Here's my question from Email since it seems like you are more active on the forum than on email (emailed you on the 11th).

Awesome Asset! I don't own it yet.

I saw you have Driving Demo video. I thought this would be awesome for my needs. I have some vehicles where my Player and my AI can get in and out of vehicles. I was going to set up each individual Player and AI in each vehicle and disable them all on Start, then enable via script. That way they all look proper.

Could I easily use Final IK instead and just set up the proper "IK" locations (no, I don't understand IK locations) for maybe the Hands, Hips, Feet and Head? If so, it sounds like I can add "IK" locations within a Open/Close door animation for each vehicle that also assigns the Hands, Hips, Feet and Head to different points in the Unity Animation. Is this possible and relatively easy with your Asset?

 

Hi,

I'm new to Final IK and this forum. I purchased Final IK some days ago and I was consuming all this forum, manual and demos and figure how to use it in my game, but I can't get it yet. Hope Partel could help me a bit.

I'm using Adventure Creator and my player character has typical mocap animations (Idle, Walk and Run).
I want use Final IK to make procedural changes to this animations, so for example, my player could hold a fire torch in one hand while Idle, waling or running. I suppose that I should use interaction scripts to make the player "grab the torch from a wall" or "left the torch on the wall", but while holding the torch, I want to be "idle holding the torch" or "walking while hold the torch"...

Could you point me in the right direction or make a basic scene project to showcase how to do it?

Thanks in advance

 

It's in the examples, lots of holding examples and pick up examples

 

I wouldn't know what to answer to that either because I don't understand half the question, so I'll just make a guess. It sounds like you need animations for characters to enter or exit vehicles. You need to create those yourself, with or without FinalIK. Let's say you have only motorcycles and the handlebars are at 4 different heights/positions. You probably could get away with creating 1 animation and solving the problem of the different handle positions with IK solvers (I guess that is what you mean by "IK locations) and scripting. But if you have a car, a monstertruck and a motorcycle for example you still would have to create 3 different animations to enter those vehicles because they all are shaped very differently. If your only usecase is entering and exiting vehicles and all your vehicles are shaped similarly enough that you can get away with using the exact same animations for all of them, then I don't see why you would need an IK setup at all for just that usecase.
If your characters also run around and interact with the environment in other ways then those might be cases where you get good/better use out of FinalIK (grounding feet to the floor etc.).

 

Hi there,

I started tweaking animations using Final IK and it is really great! I saw in the videos the effector animator do you plan to release this feature? It seems very user friendly to author animations and it is less tedious than importing from an external program

 

Yeah I think you might be right, if I wanted to do the minimal keyframe technique in the video it would be a lot of upfront work in scripts, might not be worth it.

Anyways I'm sad because I missed the sale window since I was traveling Will there be another sale anytime soon?

 

Hi! Thanks for the info!
I have located the issue and fixed it for the next release. If you'd like it now, just drop me a line support@root-motion.com and I'll send it over. The FBBIK solver did not survive assembly reload, now it does and as a bonus can also be used in [ExecuteInEditMode].

Hi, strange, I replied to you on the 12th, this letter is in my outbox, maybe it ended up in the spam?

Hi, Chris!

Yes, basically you can set it up if you pose a duplicate of one of your characters to the seat, then re-parent the important bones (hands, feet, thighs..) to the seat and the steering wheel. Delete the rest of the duplicate character.
Now you can assign those bones as IK effector targets for the players and when they sit in the car, just weight in the effector weights.

If you also wish to do get in/our animations, it gets a bit trickier. You could animate the same effector targets in Unity using the Animation Window (in play mode), but it would be probably easier to create one traditional get in/out animation for all then just gradually fade in/out the effector weights to the static driving position.

Best Regards,
Pärtel

If the torch needs to be picked up from the wall, the best way would be to use the Interaction System.
It is basically the same as picking up the ball in the "Interaction" demo scene. Actually you can lift up that ball to the front of the character and parent your torch model to it and get rid of the sphere and there you have it. You can trigger the "idle holding the torch" animation when it is picked up using the events in the InteractionObject.cs on the ball. Let me know if you'd need more detailed instructions, I understand my learning materials on the InteractionSystem are bad, I'll be working on them. Oh and the "InteractionTrigger" scene might also be worth checking out.

Hi and thanks! I was working on it, but hit a brick wall with recording animations for humanoids. It has been postponed until we gain more access to the humanoid API.

I don't think there will be a sale too soon, a lot of assets are queuing up for them. Besides, I really need to improve my learning materials before I join any more sales. It is a massive wave to support and I thank you guys for your patience!

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Thanks for responding. I missed the sale cause I was awaiting a response. I will look again when I'm at that point in my game dev.

 

I don't know if you tried it, but AnimationBaker is able to record animation with finalIK on it.

 

Yes, it can record to Legacy, which is no problem (neither is Generic). The problem is to convert that to Humanoid animation. Right now (last I checked) it is not possible to do that directly. The only option would be to use some kind of FBX/DAE exporter to export the animation and reimport as humanoid. I tried the Collada Exporter tool with limited success, but all that, including third party assets is way too hacky a solution to make a decent product of.

Take a look at this Unity blog post from last year, I mean especially the comments. Mecanim devs are aware of this and supposedly working on it. It has taken a long time, but I imagine it is a relatively complex problem to solve and Mecanim workflow improvements probably take priority.

 

Hi,

I'll try this, but FullBodyBipedIK doesn't seem to have a weight property in code (although it does in the inspector). How can I set the weight to 0 at runtime?

 

Arf okay thanks for the info

 

Code (CSharp):

1. ik.solver.IKPositionWeight = 0f;

Could not use just "weight" because all IK solvers use that and there is often also a IKRotationWeight.

I fixed the problem that was causing this error message though for the next release. If you need it right away, just write to me support@root-motion.com with your invoice number and I'll give you a link.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

Hi Partel!

I am currently working on a procedurally animated spider based on your spider bot CCDIK demo. I have run into an issue that I don't quite understand, my spider floats a bit over the ground, and when I look at each individual limb I see that the target is in fact not at the end of the CCDIK Bones chain as expected. Instead, it is way out from the tip of the leg. I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental here, as this is my first time working with IK systems. Here's a picture:
http://imgur.com/pUydQ5o
Other than this, FinalIK has saved me and my team months of development time!

 

Great thanks for your help!

I haven't seen the error in a while now I'm keeping the scripts on constantly, but I'd like the update just to be sure.

I sent you an email, thanks!

 

Hi Partel.

We started using Final.IK for our project. Most thinks we tried work really great. But we have a problem using the Grounders on our Project. Even your examples on this are not working properly. The solver foldout does not reveal any additional options (like it does in the corresponding youtube videos). I use Version is 5.1.2f1 Personal but we had that problem on other versions too. Do you got any idea what might go wrong?

Best Regards

 

Hi! I was wondering how to make this kind of effect with FinalIK.

What I'm trying to do is when a bomb (in my game magical explosion) goes off that all the characters that are near enough would turn into rigidbodies and fly away from the bomb. This would probably look cool when there are many characters flying away. So far my characters have the FullBodyBipedIK, Grounder FBBIK and RagdollUtility.

Any tips how to achieve this?

 

Hi!

First, are you using the exact same code that runs the mech spider demo or have you changed it?

Hi! Did you mean the solver foldout is completely empty? I have not heard of this before, it must be some kind of a Unity bug, because the Grounder is not using any custom editors, just normal serializable fields in the Inspector.
What if you import Final IK to an empty project? What is your Asset Serialization Mode in Edit/Project Settings/Editor?

Hi! If you wish to turn your characters to ragdoll and blast them away, you don't need to use IK at all.
Just set the rigidbodies non-kinematic, disable the Animator and call Rigidbody.AddExplosionForce on all the the rigidbodies.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

I made minor changes to fit my coding style more, and removed the sand particle effect, but otherwise it is identical.
To make sure of this I just made a new spider, reactivated all the mechspider components, and I still get the same behaviour as you can see in the attached images. There is no collider of any sort on the Spider object.

 

Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

 

Any chance you could package that thing up and send me a link to support@root-motion.com? It would be the fastest solution, otherwise it's just a lot of guessing.

Cheers,
Pärtel

 

I did actually get it up and running by doing a little hacking on the included demo scripts. I will post a tutorial soon since I had never found a way to do this online before, using Unity and Final IK it is possible and very fluid. Will show off videos shortly as well

 

Partel

I have been thinking there must be a way to copy the positions of one characters hands both position and rotation on an Interaction Object from character to another similarly boned character ? I thought the GenericPoser Script was to do that but I can't find any instructions on how to use that script......if that's not the case I thought if a person owned a LeapMotion then you might be able to pose a hand capture the posed hand and fingers using the LeapMotion and apply the position and rotation data from the LeapMotion device and apply it to for example a Mixamorig: Left Hand or Mixamorig: Right Hand being used in Interaction Object such as grasping a ball or door handle object or for that matter any object.......
Ron

 

man this is amazing, This would be a great maya plug in lol.

 

Doesn't Maya come with HumanIK?

 

Yeah but its not this. and Its very buggy, best used with mocap, and getting good pose's but final IK is way robust. If you script it in maya it can be done but maya's API is daunting.

I love it can't wait to dive in.

 

Hey, sounds great, cant wait to see!

Hi again, Ron,

The GenericPoser is generic only in the sense that it doesn't require an exact hierarchy match like the HandPoser. It still requires for the bone names and orientations to match. I have not invented a good way to make universal reusable hand targets yet.

About LeapMotion, take a look at this package, import it to a project with Final IK and LeamMotion plugins already insside. It maps the leap hands to the dummy's hands, it just depends on the bone orientations. For another character you will probably need to adjust the rotation offsets.

Thanks! you're gonna have to "live with" HumanIK for now though, or iKinema

 

Just bought this, I was wondering, why I can't post a review. I can for all my other assets.

 

Hi, Recon03, thanks for the purchase!
No idea, maybe you bought it from another account and are logged in to a different account?

 

Thanks for you package, I found it really usefull, but still have a little issue: while I was using LimbIK for the hands everything was perfect with Bend Modifier set to Animation. No I'm using FBBIK and there are no such option and upper arm facing really weird direction. Any advice please?

 

And FBIKHandsOnProp doesn't work for me as well! HALP

 

I am about to try a new animation project...I have a some questions...I want to animate a bunch of chimpanzees...
I have the rig, model, and 60+, animations...is there anything about hanging and climbing. ?.using a raycast to detect hand holds?....jumping to a ledge (hand hold colliders)....if there was a simple example of climbing a ladder,it would get me started.

Thanks for the great tools!

Patrick

 

Nope. I only have one account now. I can see it says Open, so if I did not have it, it would say buy it... I own about 30 assets, I can write a review for all of them but this one..

 

Hi!

It is probably a sampling problem. Take a look at the little blue arrows on the elbows in the Scene view while the game is not playing, are they facing in the natural bending direction of the arm? You might have to rotate the elbow bone a bit. See this tutorial video for more details.

About the FBIKHandsOnProp, how come the rifle is moving but the hands are not, is the rifle not parented to the right hand?

Hi Patrick,

It depends, a raycasting for hand holds solution would be quite flexible, but very difficult to code and tweak. Can you tell me more, I mean is the environment completely random and organic or do you build the world out of some standardized blocks or what?

I really have no idea, it's not like it's possible for publishers to disable reviews or anything like that..

Cheers,
Pärtel