Upcoming feature: inverse kinematics (Patreon)

I been working on this feature called inverse kinematics (IK). It has several applications and the first one I am using it for is to handle grabs between different sized characters.

This is what's shown in the video. (Had to keep it SFW for public patreon post)

It came to my attention from discord that not everybody is familiar with what is IK and to be honest, it is rather difficult to explain what it is. But its probably easier to explain what it can be used for.

Essentially, it is a method to add dynamism to an animation. For example, before IK, a hand in an animation that targets chest is fixed in location. So if the size or the location of the target chest changes, the animation becomes mismatched and the hand is no longer placed on the chest. So that's where IK comes in. IK can influence and change the animation so that the hand is placed on the chest, even if its size or location are changed (within a range).

The IK mechanic isn't too time consuming to implement, but it is one of those things where the devil is in the details. So as I added more IK data to various grabs, had to spent time augmenting the system to deal with various problems I encountered.

Long story short, I added IK data to about 20 different grabs for now and will probably add some more for next patch. However, not every grab will be IK enabled. This is becomes 1) I simply don't have the time to do, and 2) need a fallback for modded grabs anyways since IK is an opt-in feature.

That's it for now, next patch to test IK system to come soonTM.