IKinema RunTime available to small and indie studios for £99

Community Community & Industry Discussion
42

You can do as GageCornelius suggested by using the floor contact to handle jumps/falls. For the stairs situation, you will need to tune 3 parameters on the foot placement node under the Smoothness category. (Position Blend Speed, Rotation Blend Speed, Maximum Step Change). Blend speeds control the speed of blending when the hit location changes sharply in height/orientation. Maximum Step change the node will blend the hit location as long as it is less than this value to accommodate for situations where you teleport the character. In which case, you obviously want an immediate change in the task targets

43

This looks really exciting.

We are glad that you find the tools simple (less complicated :)) to use. Really excited what use cases you come up with.

Also, would love to play the game, I checked its greenlight page, it looks really interesting. Keep up the good work

44

Thanks @GageCornelius and @IKinema for the pointers. I must admit I didn’t delve too deeply into the tool and played the demo level expecting to just see what the tool was capable of, that’s when I was weirded out by the stairs. What I would suggest though is if you’re going to leave the stairs in the demo level then it would be prudent and very awesome of you to fix up the solver to handle the stairs. This will help a lot of people checking it out and also push your tool a bit more.

Keep up the good work!

45

Add a tutorial video how to get a and a quadruped fully rigged and working and i’m sold. I tried Ikinema a long time ago but eventually got tired of the learning curve and reverted to standard UE4 tools.

46

Hi there, try this for ); quadruped tutorial is in the process …

47

I have been playing with the software and is really great! Thanks ikinema for making it available!

I am trying to make weapons pointed to targets. It seems that I could do it with the foot placement node or with the generic solver node following this
[http://www.ikinema.com/index.php?mod=documentation&show=184#Foot Placement, Look At and Aiming Node Behaviour](http://www.ikinema.com/index.php?mod=documentation&show=184#Foot Placement, Look At and Aiming Node Behaviour)

What is the difference, has anyone done this?

48

Thanks ! Any word on the first question? (node locked license/hardware upgrades)

From my testing you can use either one depending on your overall requirements; if you just need simple foot placement + look at/aiming, the foot placement node should rapidly get you going. It does line traces for foot placement, handles interpolation smoothness and that kind of stuff automatically so it’s quicker to use and beginner friendly. (I haven’t tested weapon aiming with this node though, only foot placement and look at).

A generic solver can also achieve the same things, but it’s generic - you’ll have to setup all IK tasks in your iKinema rig yourself while having more precise control over it - you get to specify the target posiitons for these tasks, whether both translation and orientation are allowed, etc. If you check out the sample project (IKinemaGame) they’ve used both nodes across the examples depending on what a sample asset is trying to do.

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One question on this for iKinema folks though - is it possible to take the pose output of the foot placement node and then plug it into a generic solver node of the same ikinema rig or another ikinema rig? (based on the same skeleton?) The usecase I have in mind is an IK driven bite animation (like your dragon bite) which of course cannot be handled from the foot placement node. I know could just use one generic solver node but then I’d have to do the line tracing for foot placement and handle smoothness/etc on my own when this is already available in the foot placement node.

PS: I’ll post a video of my my eight legged spider climbing a plant’s stalk with and without IKinema when I get some time :stuck_out_tongue:

49

Hi VSZ,

Yes your answer to troywar is correct. It depends on your use case and the overall behaviour you are after.

Yes it is possible to do that. The inputs/outputs from the IKinema nodes are just an animation pose. You can case-cade as many as you want. (Just be aware of performance hits). However, for your use case, there is an easier option. For the “Foot placement Node” in the Details tab, under the “Offset” category, there is an option “Expose Solver Tasks”. If you enable this, referesh the nodes. Task input pins will show on the node. These will accept IKinemaSolverTask similar to the Generic Solver node.

Yes please. We are always excited with what the community will come up with :slight_smile:

50

Excellent, this approach sounds like exactly what I need! Thanks again for your prompt replies.

51
  1. I read the license is “node locked”, so what happens if I upgrade my rig - eg: change the motherboard for whatever reason. Would it be possible to transfer to the new rig? The aim is to use one license only on one machine (with periodic hardware upgrades) just to be clear.

[/QUOTE]

Yes this is in the pipeline, we are working on a mechanism for hardware rehosting. I guess this would take a few months to be honest, but we are bringing other stuff in between.

Also, we would be interested to hear comments on platform support and in what order. This is in the plan: a) iOS, b) Android, c) tvOS, d) MAC, e) Linux, f) PS4 and XBox One.

52

I’d be very interested in further platform support. My preference is in the following order:

  1. Android
  2. Mac (as a target platform, not for development)
  3. Linux (as a target platform, not for development)
  4. HTML5

Unfortunately it’s a deal breaker without at least one of these extra platforms. How long until we can expect this in the Indie package?

Is the extra platform support something I can get with the full IKinema Runtime (Not Indie)?

53

Finally made my purchase, I didn’t get the license key popup the documentation talks about though, after copying IKinema into my project plugin directory. Is the relevant documentation out of date or is do I need to “flush” my trial license from the machine somehow? I’ve already deleted the trial plugin and copied the licensed one over.

On platforms - I’m only targeting Steam so Linux and MAC (as target platforms, in that order) are what I’m interested in.

54

Thanks. I’ll be sure to send your team some Steam keys when we release this Spring. Regarding your survey of platforms, our interest is in the exact reverse of your projected pipeline: PS4 / Linux / Mac / Mobile.

55

I’ll weigh in and say:

  1. Linux
  2. PS4/XB1
  3. Mac
  4. iOS/Android
56

All of the listed platforms are available with the full RunTime; Its just a matter of porting/enabling the functionalities for the indie version, but wanted to know from where to start :slight_smile:

57

I’m kinda frsh so am gonna ask a question. Is this tool the kind that uses mocap data that i can use on my rigged model so that i can get a specific type of animation say a walk animation and a run animation? And is this a library of mocaps or much more than that?

58

A pop up will appear when the trial license expires. If you want to force this, delete IKinema folder from <UnrealEngine>/Binaries/ThirdParty/
After restart of Unreal you will be asked again for the license key; At that step, please use the full/permanent license key.

59

The tool is more about using any animation as an input and customize (change) to adapt to the game, for example look at, pointing, foot placement on non-flat surface.
I hope this helps

60

Personally, I really need PS4 support :).

61

I think the title of this thread should reflect the fact that iKinema actually costs £118.80 (£99 + £19.80 VAT). Perhaps £99 + tax? Indies will thank you for it I’m sure :slight_smile: