I am designing a tree in blender and have set up a skeleton for it. I am in the process of adding IK to the branches because for some reason I am thinking it will make the tree sway better in the wind. Is what I am doing a good/correct thing to do? If not what are some things besides player characters that this would be used?
You can use IK for anything you like. Yeah, it’s mostly associated to characters but you can use it where ever it makes your life easier for animation. Now if you’re talking about using that IK in engine, well, no, you can’t, you can only use the bones as is, no controllers can be exported and used inside UE4. You can however animate the bones using IK and export that, and that doesn’t matter one way or another, using IK or not makes no difference there other than work flow. The end result is still basically a baked animation, without IK on there.