Dragon.

IK 
Inverse kinematics for animals in UE4​ ​ copyrights ©Gamasome Interactive LLP 

Documentation 
Updated: November 3, 2018 

What is it ? 

A simplistic and highly scalable plugin solution for implementing instant ik for your animals in UE4 (Duh!). 

The plugin is designed to save you time and money when it comes to implementing inverse kinematics for 
your creatures. 

Requirements for the plugin to work with your animals 

- It is expected the skeleton of your animal(or human) to have a simple hierarchy of spine bones. The 
limbs of the animals are expected to be a child to the spine bone hierarchy . Most traditional method of 
rigging creatures for games usually qualify for dragon.ik to work.  

- This plugin will not work properly in case there are multiple parallel spine bones on the animal where 
multiple bones influence the body in a non-linear manner. 

- The plugin will not work if the feet bones are attached directly to the root bone instead of a secondary 
pelvic bone. The root bone cannot be the “pelvis” bone. The “pelvis” should ideally be a bone parented to 
the root bone , which is a parent to the remaining spine,limbs and secondary body parts like the tails. 

- Ideal characters that benefits the most from the plugin are quadrupeds,bipeds and multi-legged 
creatures. It currently does not support snakes. 

- In case there are any doubts on the requirement , you can contact me through the forum at 
https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/marketplace/1435457-dragon-ik-inverse-kinematics-plug
in 

 
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Some important notes on the working of this plugin 

- There are two types of solving automatically happening based on the feet input you provide . 

- In case of normal animals having two or more pairs of feet on its body , connected across its spine , it 
uses the normal animal solving logic where both ends of the body (chest and pelvis) are changed 
according to its terrain. 

- In case of humans,trex,raptors and even spiders , where even if there are many limbs present , but when 
the feets are only parented to a single spine joint , the solving only applies to the pelvic part of the 
character. 

It is usually advisable to only provide the legs of the character and not the hands among the input when it 
comes to bipedal characters such as humans and raptors although you can try giving it and see the results. 

-​ ​The ik solving activates whenever at least one of the feet of the animal touches the ground. You can 
also manually enable and disable the ik using the “Enable Solver” attribute in the blueprint node. 

 
   

 
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How to use it 

 

Note :​ In the case of bipedals(Like humans and raptors) or animals only having legs parented to a 
single spine bone (like some spider rigs) , the spine-start can be any spine bone in front of the 
main pelvis bone. Though , recommended will always be the spine joint connected to the hands. 

   

 
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The plugin provides two main animation blueprint nodes that can be applied in any animation 
blueprint 

- Dragon Spine Solver 

- Dragon Foot Solver 

  

The D​ ragonSpineSolver ​and the ​DragonFootSolver a

​ re independent animation nodes which can 
be used seperately . In case of using them both together , the spine solver should be called before 
the foot solver . 

The spine and limb solvers requires the ​"Dragon input Data"​ struct 

The DragonInputData uses the struct “​DragonData_MultiInput”. 

   

 
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The struct data inputs are 

-​ Pelvis bone name 

- Start spine name 

- Dragon Feet Array data​ (which is a struct array where you are expected to fill the feet bone 
names and yaw offset) 

The feet bone should be the bone right below the knee of the animal(just like in the deer example 
above) 

The yaw offset is an optional input in case the feet rotation appear in the wrong direction when 
placed on the terrain 

If you can see multi colored line-tracing shown in the viewport of the animation blueprint , it 
means the ik is successfully running . You can test the result of the ik immediately in the game 
world. 

In case there are some undesirable results , you can edit the input options when you click on the 
"​DragonSpineSolver​" and the "​DragonLimbSolver​". 

   

 
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Normal usage notes 

 

The most important settings you would normally change are  

● Body forward rotation intensity(Pelvis and Chest version) :​ The intensity of the rotation the hips 
and spine should use in accordance to the terrain. The below images use values from 2.0 -> 1.0 -> 
0.5 -> 0.25 in left to right order . For the bear in the example, the desirable values are 0.5 and 1.0. 
The value of 2.0 is too much rotation and 0.25 is too little and “stiff” rotation. 

➔ You can tweak this value on your animal and find a suitable value that is satisfactory. 
Humans and bi-pedals should generally have 0 here. 

(The bear is more “sassy” at 2.0 (Top Left) because of too much rotation intensity but more normal at 0.5(Bottom Left) 
and 1.0(Top Right) ) 

   

 
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● Body sideward rotation intensity ​: This is similar to the above one , but it is rotation in the 
sideward direction. 

● Enable Solver ​: This can be toggled on and off to manually turn off/on the solver 

● Shift Speed :​ The is the speed in which the ik should transition from enabled to disabled state and 
vice versa. Lower value will make the transition smooth. Example is the transition from standing 
to jumping in the air. 

   

 
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Input names and their functionalities 

 
- DRAGON SPINE SOLVER 

■ Basic Settings 
■ Alpha​ : A value from 0 to 1 to blend between solving state and original state 
■ Adaptive Alpha​ : Similar to alpha but retains the smoothing calculation of 
location and rotations 
■ Shift speed​ : The speed of transition from solving state and original/unsolved 
state 
■ Trace Channel​ : The line trace channel which the plugin uses. Default uses 
Visibility Channel. 
■ Trace Downward Height​ : The line trace height from bone towards down 
■ Trace Upward Height​ : The line trace height from bone towards up 
■ Calculation Relative to ref pose​ : Whether to calculate the solving on the ref pose 
and relatively modifying the current pose or directly modifying the current pose 
■ Maximum feet-terrain fail distance​ : Maximum distance from feet to terrain to 
allow the solving to happen. Higher value makes the ik to solve even on terrains 
far below the character 
■ Minimum Terrain-Capsule activation distance​ : The minimum distance between 
feet and terrain to allow solving to happen. Higher values make the ik to solve on 
terrains far below the character. 

   

 
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■ Advance Settings : 

■ Reverse Fabrik​ : Enabling this will give the chest higher priority than the pelvis on 
adapting the body to the terrain. 
■ Body sideward rotation intensity​ : The sideward rotation intensity for pelvis and 
chest bones 
■ Alternate Cross radius​ : The radius of the four line traces arranged in a cross for 
both pelvis and chest. This is used only if 'Alternate cross-based rotation' is 
enabled. 
■ Maximum dip height ​: The maximum length the character can push itself down 
when responding to terrains. Basically clamping down the dip height. 
■ Extra forward trace offset :​ Pushing the front set of line traces forward. 
■ Rotation alpha between end points​ : The alpha (0 to 1 value) of rotation between 
solved and original state for the bones between spine and pelvis. 
■ Forward direction vector​ : The forward direction value of the 3d skeletal mesh. If 
it is imported in normal unreal standards, it can be just left as (0,1,0) 
■ Body location lerp speed​ : The position change speed for the entire body. Lower 
value makes the translation more smooth, but slower in reaction. 
■ Body rotation lerp speed​ : The rotation change speed for the entire body. Lower 
value makes the rotations more smooth, but slower in reaction. 
■ Chest influence alpha​ : The influence of the chest rotation/position in the 
solving. Making it 1 means full influence, while 0 means it will be in its original 
location. 
■ Enable Solver​ : Leave it on to enable the solver. If it is off, then the solver will be 
forcibly disabled. 
■ Force activation​ : Enabling this will force the solver to activate as long as the line 
trace hits. This will ignore 'Maximum feet-terrain fail distance' and 'Minimum 
terrain-capsule activation distance'. 
■ Only root solve​ : Enabling this will modify only the pelvis rotation/location, 
ignoring the rest of the body. 

   

 
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■ Overall post solve offset​ : This is for general offsetting of the location of all 
the bones between. 

■ Pelvis control : 
■ Extra dip when going up slopes​ : Giving small values here like 0.1 or -0.1 will 
push/pull the pelvis when going up slopes 
■ Extra dip when going down slopes​ : Giving small values here like 0.1 or -0.1 will 
push/pull the pelvis when going down slopes 
■ Pelvis Z Offset​ : Overall Z offsetting of the pelvis alone 
■ Pelvis forward rotation intensity​ : forward rotation intensity of the pelvis. Making 
it 0 will ensure no rotations happen. 
■ Use alternate cross-based pelvis rotation​ : This will use the cross based line 
tracing to determine the rotations. 

■ Chest control : 
■ Extra dip when going up slopes​ : Giving small values here like 0.1 or -0.1 will 
push/pull the pelvis when going up slopes 
■ Extra dip when going down slopes​ : Giving small values here like 0.1 or -0.1 will 
push/pull the pelvis when going down slopes 
■ Chest Z Offset :​ Overall Z offsetting of the chest alone 
■ Chest forward rotation intensity​ : forward rotation intensity of the chest. Making 
it 0 will ensure no rotations happen. 
■ Use alternate cross-based Chest rotation​ : This will use the cross based line 
tracing to determine the rotations. 

   

 
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■ Experimental : 
■ Automatic fabrik selection​ : This will select the correct fabrik appropriate to the 
model as well as the terrain it is adapting to. 
■ Use feet tips(If exist)​ : This will make the body to react to the terrain using the 
bone which is a child of the assigned feet, instead of using the feet itself. 

■ Miscellaneous : 
■ Solver reference pose​ : Select between 'Ref pose' and 'Animated pose'. This will 
determine the location of the line trace. Ref pose will ensure the line trace only 
fires at the same location of the ref pose bones regardless of the current 
animated pose. 
■ Strict spine-feet pair finding​ : This will strictly assign the 'chest' and 'pelvis' as 
the bones that are the direct parent to the leg bone chain. The input pelvis and 
chest as to be at least between these strict 'chest' and 'pelvis'. 

- DRAGON FOOT SOLVER 

   

 
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● Enable Solver : ​Same as the one in the spine solver. To toggle on/off the foot solver. 

● IK Type :​ This is to choose which type of ik the feet should be using. The vast majority of 
cases should use “​ Two Bone IK”​. In case there is only one bone extruding from the 
body(Like the spiders in infinity blade example) , you can use the “​ Single Bone IK” 

● Shift Speed : T​ he speed at which the feets blend between the “solving state” and the 
“normal state”. Lower value will keep to feet to smoothly(and slowly) blend between 
these states. 

● Trace Channel :​ The line trace channel used by all the line traces of the foot solver 

● Rotation Lerp Speed :​ The interpolation speed of the rotation of the foot bones. 

● Location Lerp Seed : T

​ he interpolation speed of the location of the foot bones. 

● Line Downward/Upward height :​ The line trace heights(vertically above and vertically 
below) from the feet/spine bones. 

   

 
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Important tips/notes 

❖ Make sure the “Pelvis” and “Start Spine” are the appropriate bones in your animals. The 
feet bones should be the bones right below the ankle/elbow 

❖ In case your project suffers from random crashing during development, then i suggest 
you disable ‘Display Line Tracing’ in your spine solver which is turned on by default. It is 
only responsible for drawing the line trace in your anim blueprint viewport but it can 
sometimes cause crash with no clear reason. It is encouraged to disable it once you 
know the ik works on your character. 

❖ If for some reason , the body of the animal is not rotating even after increasing the 
“Forward Rotation Intensity”​ , try increasing the step detection tolerance . Increasing it 
will detect steps as slopes and will rotate its chest or pelvis accordingly . Having a large 
number like 100 will always rotate the spine even in case of small discrete steps . 

❖ If sometimes the solving doesn’t even happen despite having the colored line tracing 
appearing in the viewport , as well as having the right settings input , try increasing the 
LOD Threshold​ value (Will only work on 4.19 and 4.18) . Sometimes , because of bad 
scaling of the skeletal meshes in the engine , the system might detect it as an invisible 
LOD. 

❖ Max iterations​ and p

​ recision a
​ re basic inputs to the FABRIK spine . Precision is best to 
be the default provided number (around 0.1) , whereas Max iterations doesn’t usually 
require it to be more than 10 unless the animal is having a long spine having many bones 
in between. 

❖ If there are sudden changes in the body endpoints in extremely steep slopes , increase 
the vertical solver upper scale or/and vertical solver downward scale,