Hahahaha. Oh man. I couldn’t stop laughing after watching that. That looks really cool. I’m thinking about maybe using it as simply a ragdoll death effect for an rts game with hundreds of units. What do you think performance would be like in that case (say a battle of 100 vs 100 units)?
So, if I get this right though, if I have a mecanim death animation for one of my characters, I can use this asset to make it ragdoll like in the video?
Hello Velo
I am happy you find this cool and amusing. You don’t even need a death animation to make it ragdoll like in the video, but if you want to add some flare to your death so that it is not just a canned death animation nor just the standard ragdoll death you can make any mixture of the two. This asset makes it easy to have partial ragdoll effects. You can make the ragdoll follow the animation weakly so that it tries to follow the animation but at the same time is affected by physics.
You can make the whole ragdoll weak or just the limbs you want, for example an arm, a leg or the head. The included ragdoll control is an example of how to lerp strength on and off. When the ragdoll collides the ragdoll controll leaves some residual strength in the ragdoll so that it tries to follow the animation for a short while. During this period it is possible (with a little bit of work) to play your death animation of choice to make your death half ragdoll, half death animation. There are also three types of strengths so that you can customize the ragdolls response exactly to your liking.
I have been very careful not to promise to much in my marketing because I know some of what is possible will take some skill and persistence to pull of. But I have been secretly hoping that the community will recognise this as an opportunity to take semi-procedural animations to the next level. If someone launched a game with this technology, would it not be very likely to get some publicity? I plan to first use this to have my enemies in a shooter react to hits even if they are just hurt. The AnimFollow script is not just for humanoids, It is easily adapted to spiders or machines.
I tried 40 characters in a scene and got around 50 fps. Some models will require more some less, I am afraid 200 characters are too many. My advice is: don’t make it big, make it good. I will very soon release a foot IK for bipeds that will work with AnimFollow.
this is such an amazing tool, i’m having so much fun playing with it and imagining the possibilities. works solid and clean. really captures the tension between the character responding to its environment vs. the character asserting its mecanim willpower.
just so i understand, I’m trying to integrate animfollow with other IK tools. Does the order matter in which animfollow evaluates the master’s transforms? for example if i am also applying IK calculations? Does it have to be within fixedupdate to avoid the parkinson shakes when applying additional constraints to the master?
thank you for paving the way forward!!
Thank you for the kind words, I am very pleased that you appreciate its potential.
AnimFollow makes the ragdoll follow the master´s animations. If you Use IK on the master it is important that the Animfollow script executes after the IK so that the ragdoll mimics the correct pose. When I use IK with AnimFollow I run the IK script in FixedUpdate and call AnimFollow as a method from the IK script after the IK constrains are set. I have a foot IK pending release in the asset store. The foot IK is drag and drop for most biped characters, both mecanim and legacy. It also works with AnimFollow. I explain a little about it in this tutorial. If you have a problem, I will help you fix it.
thanks for the quick reply –
I just tried my IK setup followed by animFollow in fixedupdate, works perfectly, no shakes!
Kavorka, I want to buy the Asset asap. I am just wondering what are your toughts on perfomance on mobile devices such as iPhone 5 > up and Samsung S3/4 and Up. The scene will have no more than 10/15 characters.
Thank you very much
Thank you for your inquiry
I have no experience of mobile devices and would not make empty promises. It may be no problem or it may be that we have to use some macro optimizations. If you are serious, and have reasonable expectations, I am interested in helping you make it work. Try it out and get back to me.
Great asset. Amazingly Wicked Stuff.
I’m working on Mobile and would really like to see this kit be fully supported on mobile . Android, IOS, WinRT.
Would you consider a request for Solid performance on Mobile.
Having this technology locked up on the desktop is not doing it the justice.
The technology needs to be Free and Roam in a totally Mobil-listic way.
Cheers.
I expect AnimFollow to work fine on mobile. I only said I have not tried it and that I do not want to promise things I am not 100 % certain about. I get a strange feeling in my stomach when I realize that someone other than me might be the first to put this on mobile and make the next “angry flappy birds”. Most people think this is really funny and cool, which makes it easy to believe that the first mobile game with this technology would get a lot of attention. I wish I had more time.
Looks really nice, is it compatible with Final IK? Also a webplay demo would be cool.
Thank you
Yes, it is compatible with Final IK. Just remember to run the AnimFollow script directly after the IK.
I’ll consider doing a web player demo. Good idea.
There is an issue with mesh distortion, in the neck area, during the get-up animations. I ignored this earlier because I thought the big collar of the Ethan character was the culprit. After receiving angry feedback about it I took a closer look and found it is visible on some other models also. It only appears during the get-up animations. I am working on finding why this, is and how to fix it. I will also tune the get-up animations to be a little smoother. I apologize for this oversight and will prioritize to have an update out as promptly as possible.
Would it be usable in a multiplayer game?
I really liked the videos, but a playable demo is really needed.
I do not know multiplaying, but I cannot see a reason for it to not work in a multiplayer game.
I have solved the neck distortion problem. I am working on a few more things that need polishing.
I want to ask all who bought this to contact me to establish a faster channel for support and updates.
Just bought your asset, sent you a email.
I am improving the asset and polishing stuff in the example scene. The next update will also include the foot IK asset.
There is now a web player, with IK and smoother get-ups: link.
There was a few complains about the example scene not doing the asset justice. I am working on that. See the progress in the web player. I plan to submit an update within a few days.
Hi Kavorka,
I’ve just purchased your asset and I followed your tutorial videos, how to make a good rag doll and how to animate a rag doll with AnimFollow, but I seem to have a problem, I added the ReplaceJoints_S script and it added all the configurable joints, I then added the AnimFollow_S script and added the master in the inspector, but when I press play the master disappears and the rag doll just drops to the ground, video link below.
Do you know why this would happen?
Thanks.
Kevin.
Can’t say i know why. Is there no warning in the console? I thought I had added warnings for most user mistakes.
Please check the console and get back to me. We will fix this 
Sorry I’d got warnings turned off, these are showing …
Enemy Soldier Type1 RagDoll does not have a valid master.
Master transform count does not equal slave transform count.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
AnimFollow_S:Awake() (at Assets/AnimFollow/Scripts/RagdollScripts/AnimFollow_S.cs:130)
and …
Missing Script: DonePlayerMovement on Enemy Soldier Type1 RunTest
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
RagdollControl_S:WeHaveAllTheStuff() (at Assets/AnimFollow/Scripts/RagdollScripts/RagdollControl_S.cs:368)
RagdollControl_S:Awake() (at Assets/AnimFollow/Scripts/RagdollScripts/RagdollControl_S.cs:96)
Thanks,
Kevin.
