I have character that is basically the default third person character. It’s using the CR_Mannequin_BasicFootIK Control Rig Class in a Control Rig node in the AnimBP to enable foot IK. This works except for with a specific montage it seems. The montage is one I made using the Control Rig in a new level sequence, then baking it to an animation sequence, then creating a montage from that anim.
When this montage is played the feet move to the default pose position and I don’t know how to fix this.
A test I did was swapping the slot the montage uses to be after the control rig node but this results in no IK being used, lifting the character up un the ledge and making them float.
I honestly know little about animation but how can I fix this to allow IK with montages? It seems to only be an issue with montages I create with the control rig myself.
Hold up, I gave an answer explaining how animation montages can be edited using control rigs but can’t have that dynamic task you want while playing the animation but I totally forgot I have that exact thing functioning in my current project Okay sorry about that I will investigate your issue further once I’m back on my PC
Hmmm… One difference I found between my functioning control rig which also works during animation montages and yours is that I used the “IK Rig” node instead of “Control Rig”. Can it be because of that?
I’ll check tomorrow. That sounds promising but also like a very similar node. I wonder how they are different and why there are issues with control rig made anims.
I’ve experimented with the IK Rig node but it doesn’t seem to do anything but I am also unsure how to use it correctly. Its plugged in where the Control Rig node was and has the default IK_Mannequin rig set as the Rig Definition Asset.
Do you have any info on how it should be used? I cant seem to find much on using it in an anim bp, Just IK rig set up.
So here’s the thing, I also played an animation montage while having one feet elevated and that animation also effected the lower body. But everything worked by default. Also I thought your control rig or IK rig was the default one for a second but then I realized that you don’t even need to activate it, so I suppose you’re doing some custom stuff am I right?
Now at first I was confused as the node had no inputs except an alpha but after some digging I found out the IK Rig itself needs a checkbox checked to expose the goal locations.
Once I did that I found and followed this tutorial here. There guy uses a different skeleton but shows how to add a trace for the feet to find the goal location and rotation.
My anim BP now looks like this. You can see the original Control Rig node disconnected above the new nodes added from the tutorial.
The character no longer bends the other leg to reach the ground. only points their tow but will bend there leg if the ledge is higher than their foot. It’s worth noting this “works” on all montages so that’s some form of success.
Yeah I also have a similar thing in your last image in my own project for IK feet, and you’re indeed on the right track! Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the sample project, there are many things already set up there and it’s really easier to make everything from scratch rather than attempting to adjust those. There are many aspects to look for when you say it doesn’t work.
I’m still confused by your first sentence though, isn’t your goal having the character’s feet aligned with the ground and it’s legs adjust themselves when one needs to be put on an elevation? Like I said earlier, that already works and you didn’t actually need to do anything extra to activate it.
If you’re looking for a better setup for yourself by having a custom one, you can disable the character’s default control rig features and I would be able to help you better. Or you can make one from scratch as I recommend because you will need to do that eventually if you’re working on a game to publish.
So as far as control rigs and ik rigs go, its all default third person because this is an area of Unreal I have never touched before. For the anim BP its pretty default as well except my Locomotion State Machine
This is so I can switch between battle ready idle/movement and normal idle/movement.
The Event graph now has the additional node from the ik tutorial I mention in my last reply plus these so I can dynamically adjust montage play rates from my character BP
As I said this is all new to me, so hopefully all the pics help describe what I mean but this is also why I am hesitant to do away with all the preset up rigs and make them myself.
As for what I want to achieve I like the natural repositioning of the character that the Control Rig node in the anim BP achieves with the legs as seen in the og post, just without the wonky foot effect when specifically playing the montage I created using the level sequence.
Edit:
Hopefully this helps show what I’m after.
Here is the Control Rig node back in use.
The control rig seems to be more natural while the IK rig holds the character mesh in its collider, seemingly suspended, but the control rig allows the character mesh to step down as well as up despite the collider still being at the top of the ramp’s edge.
I don’t know if that helps and sorry if anything is unclear but I am rather tired right now. I only originally went down this rabbit hole of rigs hopping it would be an easy fix to this mostly working default feature.
Okay, I’m starting to understand your situation better, thanks for all the clarifications. So you’re saying without changing any settings or collisions about control rigs in the animation blueprint, your anim montage played as if it was ignoring the control rigs, is that right?
Hey, remember I said it works for me? Yeah it also didn’t work for me when I used your blueprints exactly, it does work though if you use the “Play Anim Montage” node. It took way too long for me to realize the blueprints you were using I should have checked the image you’ve sent properly. But I hope this solves your issue!
Hmmm… that’s weird. I thought I reproduced your issue but seems like there’s something else going on. In this case, it’s really hard to determine where to look for the issue. So could you try creating a third person sample game, and use a debug key to trigger an animation montage using the “Play Anim Montage” node? Without doing anything more, you would see that the character plays the animation while keeping it’s IK features. If that works, which will in fact , you can migrate your custom blueprints to this newly created project
So I created a new project with the third person template. From there I dragged in the default control rig to the level and added one of the default idle animations to it and baked the anim to the control rig so that I could edit it to create a new anim.
Here is the anim I made with the control rig.
It’s just the character striking a pose from the idle stance and is very short but it works.
Then I created an anim from that the same way I previously showed (R Click on the rig in the sequencer → Bake Animation Sequence). After that I made a montage from that anim and played it by adding these nodes to the default BP_ThirdPersonCharacter.
You can see its literally the only montage in the project.
The result seems to be the same here however with the feet taking the same incorrect positioning.
Just to make sure I grabbed one of my attack montages from the original project and checked to see if that worked fine, and it did.
You can see it’s played the same way as the other montage and the feet adapt to the ground levels during the montage. The only difference seems to be one is made in editor so now I have to wonder is this a bug with making anims from a control rig or am I missing a step somewhere to allow those anims to work properly with the control rig node?
No you can of course edit animations using control rigs and after you bake them and later turn into montages, they will function the same way as animations you’ve imported.
I originally thought your issue was the character’s feet temporarily disabling it’s IK features during animation montages, though it works in both animations here. But I’m surprised by the outcome of your first testing video (which is your second video there), I did the same thing to test for myself, baking an animation using control rigs. And then explained to you how I got it to work in earlier posts, while being confident that it would work this way.
The only thing different is that I used “Play Anim Montage” node though, maybe you can try using that instead.
Or you can have a longer anim montage that has knee bending for our testing, maybe it has something to do with that.
There should be a landing animation somewhere, which was what I used to edit in sequence and bake.
This shows the animation on the control rig with one of the foot IK bones selected, showing it is animated along with the foot. Yet in the next picture, the baked animation from that control rig, the IK bone stays in the default location.
I’m not sure why it’s not applying this to the animation.
This is definitely a temporary fix however as it seems to force the ik bones into position, regardless of the animation. I lack the knowledge though to find a proper fix but it seems that possibly the IK bones on the full body control rig don’t map properly to the default skeleton ik bones resulting in animations made or adjusted with the control rig lack IK movement.
Okay sorry about that I will investigate your issue further once I’m back on my PC
I should have checked the image you’ve sent properly. But I hope this solves your issue!
