Throwing Cars, Second(?) Iteration
Added 2022-03-26 19:48:49 +0000 UTCMade good progress with operation "fling a bunch of cars", so I'll gladly share the results!
Since the first iteration, I have added...
- Basic "pick up" and "throw" animations
- Intricate animation blending, with inverse kinematics, to properly sell the action
- A simple setup that defines where cars can be grabbed, and how much the hand must open/close to grab it
- ...plenty of small improvements and fixes
It's all in the detail.
In the following GIF, if you focus on the hand you can see it open and close, as the character changes size. Just wanted t make sure the grip looks somewhat convincing – it's a very rough approximation, but better than nothing!
The same goes for the "pick up" animation: It may not be obvious, but there is actually a lot going on, to make it work and look/feel nice. It's never going to be perfect, but I'll gladly settle for "good enough!"
Overall, I was actually surprised how smooth it was to set this up: I haven't messed a lot with inverse kinematics in Unity yet, but they're not as scary as I originally thought they'd be. Still, if I wanted to polish it all the way, I could probably spend the rest of the year tweaking parameters in the animation blending, IK weights, etc. – so, let's not get carried away, haha!
What's still missing?
I'm really happy with where this feature is, already. But, of course, there is a bunch of stuff still missing, before it's actually complete and finished.
Some of the most important things on my list, right now:
- Final animations
- Varying throw strength/distance
- Maybe a visualization for the throw's trajectory, to help aim
- Handle impact damage (both on the cars, and buildings they hit)
- Code clean-up (it's a mess right now, but that's mostly fine)
- ...whatever other thing still comes to mind
So, there's still plenty to do!
I hope you've enjoyed this update and, as always, thanks for your support!
