I’m planning on creating a simulation of a character holding a heavy box where you can visualize the stresses on his various joints (wrist, elbow, shoulder, back, etc) based on both the weight of the box and how the character is holding it. The box can be moved around so one can see the difference between holding it tightly to your body versus holding it out in front of you. I’m thinking I will need to implement inverse kinematics in order to move the box around while the character is holding it. As for tracking the stress at various joints, what would be the best way to do that with Unity? Also, if someone think’s there’s an easier way to do this than implementing an inverse kinematics solver, I’m all ears.
In this case, because you know in advance the positions you want the person to take when the box is moved I would just “bake” the whole thing… Create animations in your 3D app to cover the possible movements and blend these according to way the user moves the box. If you are using Blender you could make pseudo-algorithms to “drive” non-deforming control bones… the position of these bones can be read inside Unity to drive the colours of the part of the body to show the stress.
In my opinion when the possibilities are limited and you know the outcomes you want from experimentation (ie: holding the box this way damages your wrists overtime etc.) it is better to “bake” it in rather than attempting to get a realistic algorithm to simulate it accurately.