Moving IK constraint along a path

Ivanneke

Hi guys, I have a little question/problem.

Currently, I us IK for characters hand and wanted to try out to make him aim with his weapon by moving the IK constraint along the path I created. First, I drew a path, then created a bone called "aimer" (see picture below) aligned it with IK constraint of the hand.

Then I made the "aimer" bone a path constraint. Now it moves nicely along the path, with the IK constraint as its child, but the other bones of the hand doesn't follow it (see picture below)

This raises a couple questions:

Am I doing this whole thing right?
Is there a way to somehow make the aiming work this way?
Can you somehow see the path in Unity?

Thanks for the help guys!

Pharan

1 & 2. I'm not sure. The images don't show it very clearly. Did you mean you made the aimer bone subject to a path constraint, and had a separate bone under it as a target of a separate IK constraint? On the surface, this seems like a constraint order thing. Can you save a backup of your project and try it in the Spine 3.5 beta? 3.5 allows you to reorder constraints. See if some specific order works.

Visible paths in Unity was added a while ago. Add SkeletonUtility to your GameObject and it will be visible in Scene View.
Currently, SkeletonUtility makes the bones and paths visible in Unity Editor.

Nate

Constraint order in 3.5 allows what you want. You want things to happen in this order:

1) Apply the path constraint to position IK target.
2) Apply the IK constraint to point the arm at the IK target.

In 3.4, IK is always applied first, then path constraints. This means the IK will point your arm bones at the IK target before the target is moved to the position along the path.

Ivanneke

Thank you very much guys! May you have a plentyful harvest and your cattle never know thirst.

Agelvik

Hey, I'm having problems getting this to work properly in 3.4.02. I did what you described Nate, but the bones don't seem to update themselves after I change the IK bone position using path.. But it do update when I parent the IK bone to different bone parents, but that's it.

Nate

Agelvik, you'll need 3.5 to be able to control IK constraint order, as explained above.

Agelvik

Wops, then I misunderstood
My thoughts just concluded with "This must be the solution for 3.4!"