Hello,
I have a background in 3D art and animation, and I’ve been recently trying to learn more technical animation practices in Unreal engine to pad out my portfolio.
One of the small challenge projects I’ve been playing with involves an octopus. Due to the soft body of an octopus I’ve been playing with the physics asset and the different components used to control for physics. Specifically I’m looking at the new Phsyics Control Component and would like a solution compatible with that.
I got to a point where basic movement and things were working well and the secondary animation was looking very natural, but the point where I was trying to write the logic for the octopus’ tentacles to interact with world objects, and especially other octopus charcters using the same mesh and armature, any targets I set in the Control Rig were overwritten by the physics animation, and if I disconnected all the physics stuff, a tentacle would reach for its target point, but all bones in the chain would stretch out to follow a straight line, clipping the mesh of the other object and looking generally unnatural.
The result I was looking for would be to be able to set paths for the tentacles to follow. The simpler example would be for a tentacle to be able to follow along the surface of another octopus or object (ie the bone chain bending as the tentacle slides over the surface of a rock). The more complex example would be if the octopus put its tentacle inside a hole in a rock, and the player is given a cross section of a small tunnel inside the rock with a treasure at the end, for the tentacle to be able to target the end of the tunnel or the treasure itself, but follow along the winding path of the tunnel instead of just going straight for the target.
Basically I’m wondering how to get a rope/chain-like object to use the standard combination of traditional animations with physics for secondary animation, but then to be able to reach toward a goal, but then follow a defined path once it reaches that goal. Preferably with a solution that uses the Physics Control component and blueprints.
In my research my guess is that the solution will involve pistons or splines, but especially considering how new the Phsyics Control Component is it’s been difficult to find anything beyond IK Hand targeting and the like. My original project became a mess, and at the moment I’m looking just for suggestions on where to start looking so I can build a simpler setup with just a single tentacle and a single path to follow so that hopefully I could scale up if I need to.
Thanks so much; I’m very curious to see if anybody else has had any similar problems.