I tried to make a walk animation using Ragdoll only. The result, well, if I was simulating a drunkard, maybe it was successful. Anyway, I was saying the other day I don’t really know the workflow I should use when animations with Ragdoll. One of the problems is that I can’t pose accurately in Ragdoll. The markers can move in all directions.
I know I can make draft poses using the traditional workflow, and then use Ragdoll to add physics to the movements. But since the markers are tied to the FK bones, and I can’t really pose with FK bones, I have to use the IK bones, but switching between IK and FK bones in Blender is very buggy. I’ll see if I can show it in another video.
So my question is, what is the intended workflow for making something like a walk animation? Not just a walk cycle animation. I need the character to actually move, so every step is different.
And sorry, I’m not professional. I might have made lots of mistakes in the video that would make you cringe. You don’t have to watch the whole video. You can easily see the things I’m struggling with just by watching a little.
And this is a video showing how buggy the FK IK snap is in Blender. Sometimes it works, but it breaks easily. This is not Ragdoll’s problem of course. It’s a Blender bug. But if Ragdoll is intended to be used with traditional posing in Blender, it is a problem. Before Ragdoll was available, I’d only use IK. But like I said before, the markers are tied to FK bones, so I have to switch back and forth between IK and FK. Is it possible to make animations like walking or jumping using Ragdoll only?
Firstly, it’s great that you try this. This is indeed where Ragdoll is going, but it isn’t there yet.
At this time, there simply isn’t one. Ragdoll can add physics to existing animations, like a tail or the transition into physics from the impact from a bullet etc.
The Live Mode tools is a step in the direction of animating using only Ragdoll, yout intuition here is solid and you’ll see more of this shortly. But the current version is not it; all examples you’ve seen of Ragdoll were animated using traditional rigs and posing techniques with Ragdoll added over it.
Not sure if I should start a new thread about this but, bug bug. I think I have narrowed it down to a “Snap to Simulation” bug. I believe the bug is that “Snap to Simulation” does not care if a marker is untargeted, it still applies the rotation and location of the marker to the bone it is attached to.
Oh okay, I’ll try to keep the videos as short as possible next time. Much of the video is showing which bones are FK or IK. The part where I show the problem starts at 2:05.
The steps to reproduce this problem is:
Assign markers to IK bones such as those of an arm. There should be 2 IK bones only, one at the upper or forearm, the other at the hand. To complete the chain, a marker should be assigned to a deform/FK bone in the arm. For example, the IK bones are for the upper arm and hand, and the deform/FK bone is for the forearm.
Select the solver, then untarget the marker assigned to the deform/FK bone. In this case it’s the forearm bone.
Pose the arm in Live Mode, then Snap to Simulation.
The forearm bone will have some location and rotation applied to it, but it shouldn’t, because it is already untargeted.