I have experimented with control rigs and IK(Inverse Kinematics) for a long time now, this post culminates different use cases where control rigs and IK have come into play. On this post you will find the following:

• Control Rigs and IK used in scientific experiment
• Control Rigs and IK used on bespoke non-traditional armatures.
• Control Rigs and IK used in 4 day Game Jam

Usage In Research Paper

When writing my dissertation at university the topic I wanted to cover was about the role of a Technical Artist in the games industry and figure out its effectiveness. It’s title is “Accessibility, Efficiency, and Quality: The Value of a Technical Artist” Here is the abstract of my research report:

The role of a Technical Artist is one often misunderstood, misrepresented, or contradicted in definition. This paper sheds light on the confusing subject by creating a new way to categorise the job of a technical artist based on the software development life cycle (SDLC). And further delves into how a technical artist affects the project and team as a whole in the Games Industry through industry research and scientific experimentation. These experiments are grounded on human-computer interaction principles and show the value of a technical artist in streamlining workflows and elevating creative outlets. Comparing the use of two types of 3D animation styles one requiring a technical art tool and the other not. Ultimately showing a 52.63% increase in quality efficiency using a technical art tool with a reduced average task time and increased average quality of work.

Anyway, now you have the gist of what I did I will show you the tool I created to achieve this. The video below demonstrates the tool I have created in this example that was used for my experiment:

Bespoke Control Rig and IK

In creating my final project at university Invision I used my skills with control rigs to develop a bespoke control rig that allowed for the manipulation of wings with as simple an application as possible. I can’t just have the wings be static now, can I?

So first up, creating a control rig involves creating controls that guide the skeleton of the character during animation. A control rig is made by using advanced programming techniques in bespoke coding graphs made for Unreal Engine. Typically control rigs are made in animation software however as Unreal supports the use of advanced control rigs I opted to use this. Also because I had previous experience with the tool. The most recent use of it was from the vertical game jam in December but I previously did a study on the use of Inverse Kinematics in Unreal Engine in my dissertation research report. Suffice to say, this was my mode of choice when it came to animating.

Creating the control rig took slightly longer than usual because of the unique bat-human anatomy I created. It also meant I wasn’t able to use premade animations, so custom-made animations were the only option. My solution to creating bat wings on the character animate realistically is by treating them as a replacement for a character in full-body IK which is an unreal function that averages the bone positions between an area to achieve a fluid result.

Useful Resources Full Body IK: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/control-rig-full-body-ik-in-unreal-engine

I used this in addition to the standard IK methods employed in making control rigs such as two-bone IK with a pole vector control on the knee to guide the knee position as seen in the image of the control rig above. Once working It allowed me to much more easily animate the different animations required for my player character: Idle, Walk, and Run.

Video showing my control rig working:

In addition to this control rig I custom-made a physics mesh for the player character allowing certain bones to animate based on physics simulation instead of kinematic animation. This has effects like making a character feel more life-like such as having a tail that swooshes around behind the character. In this instance, I made the tail swoosh, and one of the ears move based on physics. I would have made both ears physics-based but due to a mistake in blender weight painting, I wasn’t able to in the end and I didn’t want to re-import the mesh because it would take too much work for a small change. 

Now with the control rig done and the physics bones done, I set a day aside to do some animation. I decided to watch some animation theory videos on YouTube as research to have it all fresh in my mind and it helped a lot to think about the fundamentals of good animation. 

Video showing animated character:

After creating the animations I programmed in easing between animations using blendspaces and not only did this but also used this same smoothing technique on smoothing the rotation of the player character and the transition between running and walking as well as idle and walking and running and idle. Ending up with a very clean and good-feeling control scheme. Ultimately I wanted the player to feel like a playful bat, and that is what I have achieved and I am happy with it.

Implementation in Game Jam

In the Vertical game jam this past year (An internal university cross-year game jam) I created a sophisticated control rig and even improved upon existing designs with a time limitation.

My contribution to this jam was mainly in the leadership position as project manager however I also acted as an animator making all the animations from scratch on this project and acted as a tech support fixing blender models and coding errors in the blueprint code. I also managed GitHub, coordinated the development team, and helped with last-minute level design when necessary.

To animate in this project I used an IK rig to make animation higher quality, quicker, and easier. Technical artists often use IK (Inverse Kinematics) to aid animators and in this game jam, I decided to use the same technology to help me animate. The way it works is by calculating the position of bones averaging them between two points, for example between the shoulder and the hand, it has to work out the elbow and wrist movements. It made the work higher quality in the end and was quicker to animate, the only issue however is the time it takes to set up. In this project, if I were to do it again I would use premade animations instead of animating them myself because of time constraints although I got it all done it was stopping me from possibly working on other elements or a more interactive team lead. 

As you can see in the video below I am demonstrating the effectiveness of using an IK control rig in an Unreal Engine. It is easy to animate, arms, legs, torso, head, and even fingers using a well-made control rig.

Video example I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=737gRbg5ujE