Joints and character movement

Unity Engine
1

Hi! I’m writing something like a Sim Life / RTS hybrid.

I want my ‘characters’ to be perfectly autonomous, and to interact realistically with their environment. A lot of the terrain is going to be rough and so I would rather not have pre-scripted animations.

It seems like there are a couple of ways to get animated characters that interact with their environment:
Animated rigidbodies with isKinematic, using the character stuff that is used in the FPS demo.
As above, using my own animations.
Rigidbodies without isKinematic, connected by springs and influenced via forces.
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Now, all the documentation tells me not to do the last part, because you “want characters to defy physics”.

Well, I would like my characters to not defy physics; I’d like them to be constrained by physics. I recognize that this will be some significant amount of work to get the forces, masses, and the like correct, but given that, I have a question:

Will keeping all my characters physical pose serious problems performance/otherwise?

2

It sounds like you are talking about building an IK system…

That will be a lot of work–someone with more techy knowledge can tell you how much, but it’s a lot.

It will also be a drag on performance–

If you are building this yourself, I recommend building it with standard fk animation, and getting the gameplay solid.
Then if you have time, take on an IK system. Actually, I’m sure there are a lot of people who would like an IK system, so you might find some partners on the forum.
(including me).