WHAT
and will be joining us to explain the new AnimDynamics features being used to create Paragon’s characters. By breaking down an example Paragon character, they will show off how they are using a simple physics solver to add dynamic elements to characters without the cost of using the full physics engine.
WHEN
Thursday, January 21st @ 2:00PM ET - Countdown]
As these are mostly uncharted waters for the community I don’t really have any “on-topic” questions. However, a few curiosities come to mind, although a few of them go off on a tangent, if not outright off-topic. I am sure a lot of these will be answered during the stream proper:
Do you use ragdolls in Paragon? If yes, do you at any point have to calculate the velocity of a ragdolling skeletal mesh? If yes, how?
How do you handle transitions between ragdoll and animation?
The two questions are linked to a concrete use-case of mine where the player can toss enemies around. My code has to detect when the enemy has landed (i.e. when the ragdoll stopped moving), if it has hit something with a fast enough speed to cause damage (again velocity check) and then have him stand up (back to animation). Both of these things seem excessively difficult. The former is difficult because even in stand-still the ragdoll still reports very frantic velocities, due to some part of it twitching a minuscule amount most likely. My best bet for the latter is to detect whether the root ended facing up or down and play either “stand up from back” or “stand up from stomach” respectively.
Do you do “animation LODs”? i.e. animations, simulations or skeletons becoming simpler with distance.
If you simulate something (like say the tentacles on the head of the character in the previous stream whose name I forgot) do you animate it and then apply a simulation on top of the animation or are their bones just frozen during animations? Furthermore, your T-Pose showed that those same tentacles are curved in the rig, they aren’t pointing in a straight line. Doesn’t this cause issues with the simulation and the skin?
I’ve got a question from the previous animation twitch stream. What about using IK Feet solution on quadruped animals/creatures? This currently doesn’t really work with the capsule. And tbh we don’t want to rely on Ikinema Plugin to solve the IK feet issue for our animals. Please let us know. Would be great to know how to tackle that. Ty!
Thanks for watching the stream! If anyone has any other questions about Anim Dynamics you can catch me here. I’m also on twitter. Looking forward to what the community can do with these new features!
Hey guys I just found this thread and I am also available for questions if you have any for Anim Dynamics. Thanks for watching if you watched and if you didn’t go check it out! You can also catch me on Twitter @Rhragnarok.
Awesome stream guys, thanks a ton for all the awesome info! I asked this earlier but I assume now that I’ve watched the stream I can construct this better. Namely - how do these work with LODs? If I were to do a distance-based alpha faloff, and it drops down to 0 if my character is far enough away, does this turn off the dynamic, i.e. drops its performance cost?
If the alpha for that node is zero I don’t think we evaluate on that node so that would improve your performance. We’re also adding LOD thresholds to all skeletal controllers so you can force disable them beyond a certain LOD.
Another option is to not have those bones weighted on that LOD. This will also skip any skeletal control nodes that utilise those bones as they are filtered on a LOD switch if the bones they manipulate are no longer weighted.
Oy, xuse me mate, so with the animDynamics being relative to the character capsule and all that (as I picked up from the stream), does this mean if me character is standing on a moving platform (that moves fwd/bwd like a jumpNrun bridge), will the dynamic things not react to those externally-initiated accelerations/decelerations?
Maybe there is a switch innit? To turn on or off the dynamics being relative?
Movement component and capsule are aware of their relative movement, compared to the ‘base’ object that it is moving against. I’d expect that this would affect Anim Dynamics just the same – so they won’t react to movements of the base.
BUt hang on mate, I do want them to react wouldnt I? If my character has flappy floaty bits of cloth like the dude they used in the stream, and he was just standing on something that is moving fwd/bwd. I would want to see a reaction in his cloth dynamics when the platform he stands on changes movement direction right? Is that what I use the wind setting for? Like do I measure the absolute move direction and speed and feed it real-time into the system or what? What if my character just jumped? (without root motion)
Will the dynamics then not register the massive impact up when starting to jump? or the change in direction at the peak height, or the when landing?
I guess I need to try this out for myself dont I? Oy Epic Exelcior, can you explain mate?
