Full Body IK: Procedural Dragon Animations

Andreas Suika
Unlike traditional inverse kinematic solvers that operate on a single chain with a single effector, Full-Body IK allows for multiple effectors and sophisticated per-bone settings to control the entire body.

FBIK in Unreal Engine 5 enables you to construct Control Rigs that can be posed and driven with a high degree of control and flexibility, delivering natural, believable motion

In this video, Andreas Suika (@AndiDev_) shows you how to integrate FBIK into your animation workflow. Using the solver and integrating it in a highly modular approach, we create a 100% procedural animated dragon. You will see the power and flexibility of Post Process Animation Blueprints as they breathe life into the dragon by leveraging physics and several control rigs on the same character. 

Andreas demonstrates how FBIK can be used to  modify and adjust animation in real time when a character needs to reach toward a location in the world, as demonstrated when the dragon character moves his head towards apples that are laying around in the world. 
 

    Get Unreal Engine 5 Early Access

    If you’re an existing Unreal Engine user, you can get UE5 Early Access and the Valley of the Ancient sample project from the Epic Games Launcher. If you’re new to Unreal Engine, we suggest getting to know UE 4.26 as a first step.