Physical Animation usage and performance

Development Character & Animation
1

Hey guys, I’m working on a physics based animation/combat system and have a few concerns regarding physical animations:

  1. It seems like IK does not play nice with physical animations (from here on referred to as PA). When I use the solver to direct the player’s hands, it works well when PA is disabled, but barely works at all with it enabled. However, when I used the rigid body node in an experiment of simulating arm swinging during motion, the IK seems to work just a good as usual. Worth noting is that I’m using Ikinema’s full body IK solver, but I figure it’s the same for built in solvers. Any ideas how to fix this?

  2. I have not found anything regarding performance of PA. Is it very expensive? I’d guess it’s about the same as a simulated ragdoll, but who knows. I’m not going to simulate large scale battles, but I still want a decent number of characters (around 20) at any time. Is this viable considering the simulations going on?

  3. If you have any other tips/suggestions feel free to tell me!