I’m having an issue with the knee joint and IK movements of the robot character I’ve created, and I’d like to ask for some advice.
This shows the robot character I made.
The second image shows the structure of the robot’s knee joint.
As you can see, this knee joint is designed to move only along Pitch axis, and movements along the Yaw and Roll need to be restricted. To achieve this, I connected an Apply Limits node to ensure that the knee joint can only rotate on the pitch axis while restricting the other axes. The third image shows the detailed settings I configured in the Apply Limits node.
Thanks to this setup, the knee joint is successfully constrained to move only along the pitch axis. However, the problem arises with the IK movement.
In the fourth image, you can see that when the robot places one leg on a step, the pose looks unnatural and stiff. The IK movement for the leg doesn’t adapt properly to the environment, resulting in an awkward pose.
With Apply Limits node
Without Apply Limits node
For reference, my current animation logic is based on a motion matching system. As shown in the fifth image, I’m using nodes like this.
Despite these settings, the IK results on uneven surfaces, such as stairs, look unnatural.
How can I make the IK movement look more natural while maintaining the pitch-only constraint on the knee joint? Are there any specific nodes, logic, or techniques I can use to solve this problem? I’d really appreciate any suggestions or advice!