Thread by @Tuatara_Games

We've been experimenting with visuals and mechanics for a potential @LetThemCome sequel. Powered entirely by procedural animation tools of @UnrealEngine and Niagara VFX, check out a teaser of our vision on Youtube #gamedev #indiedev #UE4

We'll be sharing some of our findings and breakdowns in the following days, starting with how we brought these creepy fellas to life with procedural animation in #ue4! #gamedev #indiedev

One of the first things you'll need to start with for procedural animation is IK. Luckily, #UE4 comes with a very convenient Two Bone IK function you'll find in animation blueprint. All it needs is an IK bone target position which you set at the base of the foot! #indiedev

Next up you'll want to check the distance between your current step at the target for the next step. When that distance is above a certain threshold you interpolate the foot into it's new position and IK will take care of the rest! #UE4 #indiedev #gamedev

Here's a handy function we used for interpolation. You can use a sine to also lift the foot up between the two positions. #UE4 #indiedev #gamedev

To tie things off you can raycast your footstep targets to make your procedural buddy climb over obstacles. Check out the following tweet for tips on how to use position averaging and some simple math to make the body adjust its pos/rot #UE4 #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

There are different ways of achieving this but here's what we went with. Using the position of the feet we can figure out how the body itself should be positioned and oriented to follow the animation appropriately #UE4 #indiedev

A crucial part of making things feel good and less obviously procedural is variation. Each actor has randomized body height, stride length, movement speed... Random noise can also really help thigs feel more natural! #UE4 #indiedev #screenshotsaturday