I’ve been messing around with the PhAT for a bit, and was wondering if there was a way to simulate half physics and half animation for the entire body? So the character could fall over but still be receiving animations. For example, a character could be injured and go into an active rag-doll state, so they could be squirming in pain but still physically react to the environment.
Check out the content example with blending animations with physics. You can then define which bones and how much physic simulation. Physical Animation Map: Animation Content Examples | Unreal Engine Documentation
I tried that, But when all of the bones are physically simulated, such as the Pelvis or Root and everything below, I get some strange results.
I had the problem that when I physic simulate everything I can’t reset it anymore because the root gets messed up somehow. Resetting it gives it then some random rotation and location offset. Maybe that is related to your strange results. I was thinking adding a additional root bone that is not physic animated nor normal animated could be a workaround.
Hmmm maybe. But at the moment I don’t need to reset anything. In the content example, I switched the bone that became physically simulated along with everything else following it in the hierarchy to both the Root and the Hips. This caused the skeletal mesh to fall through the floor, then ping off into the nether if I moved the slider. So I changed the blueprint to “Set All Bodies Simulate Physics” instead of “Set All Bodies Below Simulate Physics” but now nothing is happening. Im an animator and I dont know too much about Blueprints or any scripting for that matter.
Not sure how your setup is but you will have to set your skeletal mesh to have collision set to on, so your physic asset collides with the world. When you have a pawn you usually have a capsule collision that you will have to set off then otherwise skeletal mesh and capsule will collide which makes it then go crazy. The skeletal mesh in the example probably has collision set off because it doesn’t need to collide with the world as long its root is fixed/animated. Blending animations while the root falling is probably always problematic.
Natural Motion’s Euphoria is the only good technology out there for ragdoll animation. Not accessible to indies, but amazing tech.