Specialization: FABRIK (Procedual Animation) | Work In Progress

Intro

In the game assembly you have a course that is called specialaztion where the student pick a area where they would "specialize" in. It's more like a area where they would like to learn about. What I picked was procedual animation using FABRIK method. The plan I made was to make a procedual animated spider in unreal but I hade so many problem with rigging and unreal so a couple weeks in I changed to unity instead.

What is FABRIK

Fabrik, short for Forward and Backward Reaching Inverse Kinematics, is a game-changing technique in animation and robotics. It's a mathematical algorithm that allows precise control of articulated structures, enabling lifelike movements in digital characters. This is my journey on FABRIK.

Why I pick procedual Animation as my specialization

I get so excited when i see awesome procedual animation, it's fascinating. Procedual animation breaks the rules of traditional animation and opens up more possibilities to do. I decieded to pick it because of my passion for animatoin.

There was this one clipthat first got me hooked on procedual animation ages ago. I never tried doing it because I hade no knowledge in programming but this time i will attempt doing it.

The Struggle Begins

My journey into procedural animation began with the ambitious goal of creating a spider with procedural animation in Unreal Engine. However, I quickly found myself grappling with numerous obstacles, particularly in the realms of rigging and engine compatibility.

Initially, my plan was to start small by focusing on a single leg of the spider and

 implementing inverse kinematics (IK). Yet, even this seemingly straightforward task proved daunting. Upon exporting the leg model to Unreal Engine, I was confounded by

 the disappearance of the skeleton—a frustrating setback that persisted despite numerous attempts to rectify the issue.

Frustrated but undeterred, I made the decision to switch gears and transition to Unity. To my surprise, the skeleton appeared as expected upon import, alleviating some of my initial concerns. However, my relief was short-lived, as I soon encountered a new hurdle. Attempting to manipulate the leg using the FABRIK method resulted in unsightly stretching of the mesh—a far cry from the fluid motion I had envisioned.

My FABRIK/Result

This is how far im at my FABRIK, I made a script named Bone Setup that would render out the bones so I could debug if it happends something wrong. You could also change the color and change the size of the pyramids.

heres a little bit of the code.

My FABRIK script that im creating is a mix of someones else IK in asset store and unity own's animation rigging package. I took insperation of unity bone renderer setup thats why I made my bone setup script. The structure in mind is this 

|- Character
  |- Root_jnt
  |- sk_character
  |- Rig1
    |- LeftLeg (IK script component attached)
      |- Target (Script to move the target)
    |- RightLeg (IK script component attached)
       |- Target (Script to move the target)
    |- LeftArm (IK script component attached)
       |- Target (Script to move the target)
    |- RightArm (IK script component attached)
       |- Target (Script to move the target)