Tried 5 different packs today and not one of them had animation on the IK bones. Turned on bone names and all the IK bones, in all the packs, just floated in their default pose while the main hierarchy was added. Seriously, how hard is it for an animator to add 5 position and 5 orientation constraints in 3ds max? Are IK animations not part of Epic’s marketplace standards? If they aren’t, then why aren’t they? If they are, then why isn’t Epic actually enforcing its standards? This is the most rudimentary of QA you perform on animations. Without IK the animations are only suitable for use on the mannequin, and I imagine most of us aren’t planning on using it as our one and only character model.
That’s Dumb. I made sure to included it on my pack. I feel like its because animators use different skeletons while animating, and then re-target the animations to the Default Skeleton. I took the time to create my animations on the Default rig by using the Maya Rigging and Animation Toolset so I could make sure everything works.
Many people don’t understand the power and importance of the IK bones, and how they need to have animation data baked onto them to be used properly.
You can create your own IK bones using virtual bones instead.
Can you bake the animation Data onto the virtual bones?
Sorry for the possible stupid question, can you give an example of what you use the animated ik bones for?
For example, are you using them to drive the pole vectors of the two-bone ik node?
Thanks for any feedback - just trying to understand better.
The animations just aren’t useful in a game without IK bones. IK bones have a myriad of uses from correctly placing feet on the ground, to correctly placing hands on a gun, to ensuring animations work consistently across multiple character models. Without IK bones, your animations have no value whatsoever.
I don’t really know what you mean by baking animation data to the virtual bones because the virtual bones only exist in UE4. But you can use them in any way you like, I don’t think UE4 cares what kind of bone it is as long as it’s a bone (or in this case virtual bone). The only limitation is that you can’t skin them to the mesh.
This is due to people not “animating” anything;
They are simply porting their motion capture files to sell on Marketplace. Quick easy moneis.
(Motion Capture Online)
This is true. But, in the end I don’t care where the anims came from or how lazy it was for them to make them, as long as they are actually useful in game design.