I’m planning to create a game with a 100% procedural, physics-based animation engine. The closest analogues are animations in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and Gang Beasts. The difference is, i want my animation engine to be as realistic as possible, and with the better control over the character.
I have read articles on the topic of Inverse Kinematics, Euphoria animation engine and the procedural animation in general, but mostly i found the experiments taking place in Unity rather than in UE4.
I have found some IK literature and plugins for UE4, but they all rather aim on adjusting character feet position than on generating a fully procedural animation itself. I have an idea to use the on-the-fly neural network-generated patterns as a basis for animation and then apply IK system with constraints that alternate depending on a physical/mental state of a character (e.g. wounded/scared).
I know, the idea is very ambitious so i’m looking for a basic foundation to start with. What would you advice me to read/learn?