FMP: Week 17 Monday

On Monday, I got started on the engine work.

I originally intended to have some foot IK placements sorted out on monday following this tutorial, but I had some issues with the implementation. The ray trace was buggy and caused the character to glitch off of ledges a lot, and the legs weren't actually conforming properly to the collisions of the ground and slopes in some areas, so I ended up ditching it.

I've noticed that whenever I do blueprints it always tends to take me 4 times as long as it would if I had a lecturer around in person to help me out, as I often encounter issues that I'm not sure how to fix and have to spend hours using print string to figure out the issue. I'm too nervous to post my issues to a discord server where the rest of the course can see what I'm struggling with, and emails take too long to exchange- especially since the hours I'm most productive at don't correspond with the hours the lecturers are working now... not having a schedule has really messed with my body clock.

it almost works if you ignore how awful the glitches are :')

Foor IK function graph

Animation graph

Trace ground function graph

I have no idea how to stop it being so buggy so I've decided to just... try again in the future if I have time.

I managed to waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to fix the issue of foot placement, but did manage to get something productive done by attaching the props to their sockets. I added a CAT tail bone to the fishing rod and animated it bending, then imported that separately to the bobber into the scene. I created blueprints for each of the characters and added hand sockets to the relevant bones, of which I could then attach the static and skeletal meshes to.

He can finally eat!

He can finally fish!

He can finally guard!