Look IK (lookposes)

Overview

CRYENGINE supports parametric-blending for automated Look IK that can be used to make characters look at points in the 3D world. This system is used from the code, from AI and can be used by designers through FlowGraph.

You can combine it with different locomotion cycles. The character with Look IK on tries to look in the target direction as long as possible, then it turns its head away. Warping is really preserving the style of the base-motion, because we always start with the final animation-pose and add small modifications to it to comply with the new constraints. The spine, head and the eyeballs are animated to make the character look in the target direction. The eye-lids move as well creating believable Gaze Control.

The same techniques is used in half-interactive cutscenes, to make sure the actors makes eye-contact with the player.

Look IK Setup

Skeleton Setup

Refer to Skeleton Setup section in .

Setting up the Character in 3ds Max

Your character needs a Look IK bone as shown in the picture below.

The Look IK bone is a child of the Head bone. Make sure your eye bones are also properly named and children of the Head bone.

If you are switching from the older Look IK system, you have to re-export all your chrs after adding the Look IK bone.

CHRPARAMS Setup

Creating the Look Poses

Once you have setup the definitions in the , you need to create the Look Poses asset in 3ds Max. You can use the AimPose Creator provided with CryMaxTools to create the Look Poses.

Look poses work by setting up a pattern or range of aiming directions that the engine uses to blend between, in order to find the correct direction in which a character should be looking at. CryENGINE requires exactly 9 or 15 sequential frames to create this pattern.

Here is a sample Look Poses Bip asset: LookPoses_SDKFullBody.bip

You need to export the animation into a folder mapped for your character (see )

The final exported CAF file cannot be part of a DBA file.

Testing the Look IK in the Character Editor

To test local lookpose assets (added to the build after animations folder has not been processed by the build system) it is necessary to set the ca_UseIMG_AIM to 0 before starting Sandbox

In the character editor you can test them by playing any default animation on the default layer, then activating a lookpose on the layer which has been assigned being a look-ik layer (default is 15).

A helpful CVar for debugging is ca_DrawAimIKVEGrid 1. Make sure the Look IK checkbox is on!