Skategame development: IK legs ~ “IK” stands for “inverse kinematics”, which is a commonly used method to position limbs in games. Basically, if you know the positions of a characters hip and foot, it’ll work out where the knee must be. All the rest of the animation on the robot guy is using forward kinematics (FK), which is the normal way where you choose the angle of your joints and it’ll work out what position the limb is. Like posing a mannequin.
I needed this for grind tricks – if he lands in a grind I can set his feet position to be in the right places on the board, and then choose his body position, and his knees will work themselves out. Great for making it look like he’s absorbing an impact or leaning back on a downrail. In 2D it’s pretty simple, you get the choice of putting the knee forward or backward. In 3D, you get a whole 360 degree choice of where his knee could be (including bow-legged, knock-kneed and backward chicken legs), so I had to give each leg an “IK handle” to control which way his knees point.
Haven’t touched this game in quite a while due to other things, so when I finally get to the next step, I’ll be posing him in those 15 different grind positions.