Creating a ragdoll from scratch

Hello everyone!

My skill in Unity is low. I want to create a demo scene. There are a character and pickable objects. Character should be a ragdoll “floating” above the ground and moving by a single force applied (no need to animate it, just push a ragdoll in needed direction, e.g. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator). Also, when a player pushes a button right arm of a character should become straight and it should follow the mouse look to be able to pick objects on a scene. Main challenge is that I want to make it all myself. So, what I did so far is:

  1. Created a dummy model in 3ds max
  2. Added bones for a model in 3ds max
  3. Exported it as fbx to Unity
  4. Used a ragdoll wizard to create a ragdoll from a model
  5. Applied a constant force to Head bone, so a ragdoll will fly above the ground
  6. Created scripts to push a ragdoll (apply force to Spine), mouse look (rotate Head and Spine according to camera rotation).

In general it works, BUT I cannot accept the result I got. I’ve faced following issues:

  1. For some reason mesh deforms in Unity (screenshot 1)
  2. Ragdoll shakes all the time no matter what drag value I apply
  3. MORE glitches when applying a force.
  4. Have no clue how to implement the “arm” functionality I described above.

So the question is, what mistakes did I make? Is that because of the model or something is wrong in Unity project? Maybe mistakes are in basics and the approach should be totally different?

I can provide any screenshots and files if you would like to help me.

Thanks in advance, guys. Look forward to your answers.

Can you elaborate, why Unity ragdoll is not suitable for your application?

The thing is that I do use unity ragdoll and still have these troubles.