- 535
- France
Making a posed animation for a driver in a car is no big deal, the static pose is not the problem (if you actually can open the file properly... hum.).
The whole problem would be to work with IK nodes in this matter, it's a whole different process than FK nodes and would require a very different lecture of it from the engine. For fixed, predictable and linear animation, like the recording of an animated movie, it's so much better to work in IK. But for a video game with a physic engine and variable input, it's a nightmare, and a very glitchy one.
If someone needs a bit of a lesson on this, FK is for Forward Kinematic, IK is for Inverse Kinematic. First one means you define parameters from the main bone, to the linked next one, then the next, etc... for each frame of the animation. It provide a rigid, very reliable animated body but you have to adapt it for each frame of your animation loop, bone by bone. IK means you define the parameters for the bones-link points, not the bones themselves. like "magnetic nodes". You say point A goes from there to there, and the whole body adapt to it. Looks magically efficient BUT... It also imply the whole animation must adapt to it, for every frame. So any physics input from the game engine, from the user, any non-logical position of the nodes may end up in a ragdoll glitch... debugging this in a game litterally based on physics inputs is, well, ambitious.
Last solution would be an implemented tool, like an editor, where you create easily your animation in IK and convert it to FK to be used in game. Would've been super-cool for modders, but complete waste of time/money for anything else game related, and useless for themselves because they can already do it in most animation related software. It's a shame, I know.
And no, I am not (at all) qualified to create such tool myself.
