EnviroSense: Immersive Hand IK

Procedural hand placement for immersive gameplay and object interaction.

EnviroSense: Immersive Hand IK was created as a modular asset that could be added to a humanoid character that would provide the ability to interact with the gameplay environment in a more dynamic and immersive manner. Whilst procedural world interaction is the aim, the same system can be used to provide simple interactions with various gameplay objects, e.g. switches, levers and keypads, in the absence of dedicated animations. 

EnviroSense is not a replacement for an animation driven IK enhanced specific action dedicated interaction system but provides an accessible multipurpose modular solution to procedural and targeted sensing of the gameplay environmental objects delivered through procedural IK and hand animations.

Hand placement can be fully procedural or driven by particular targets that can be controlled by end-user code. Object sensing is highly customizable: IK engagement times; hand specificity; single or both hands; position and rotational offsets; selected hand animations (samples included); smoothing of movements; hand movement types; and variable chance of interaction to reduce predictability)

v1.1 brings replication to the asset for multiplayer use.

v1.2 brought object caching to allow smooth recommencement of sensing when previously disallowed.

v1.3 brought an optional to make interactables conditional.

Basic importation of and functionality of EnviroSense into Advanced Locomotion System V4 (ALSv4) and Advanced locomotion Component v2.3 has been confirmed.

A demo Map with demo objects and interactable objects is included for illustration purposes.

****IMPORTANT**** The IK makes use of animation blueprint post-processing and twist bones. This is dependent on the quality of the character model used and cannot be corrected by the asset. Most typically, the absence of good twist bone weighting will result in twisting of the mesh, particularly at the wrist (see extreme example in the documentation). ****IMPORTANT**** 

The asset has been tested with default UE5 mannequins and a metahuman.

Technical Details

Features:

• Supports UE5/4 Mannequin and Metahuman skeletons.
• A modular component system to confer procedural hand placement.
• Dynamic sensing of specific objects.
• Targeted IK interactions with specific objects.
• Customizable for fine control of object interaction.
• Replication.
• IK interactions are supported by appropriate twist bones and the use of a post-process animation blueprint (see important note below).
• Demo map and objects to illustrate object setup.

Number of:

Blueprints: 34

Animation Blueprints: 3

Static Meshes: 43

Animations: 7

Materials: 10

Textures: 20

All core assets created for the asset (sound files from the engine).

Input: N/A (demo is setup for keyboard/mouse).

Network Replicated: Yes.

Supported Development Platforms:

Windows

Important/Additional Notes:

The IK makes use of animation blueprint post-processing and twist bones. This is dependent on the quality of the character model used and cannot be corrected by the asset. Most typically, the absence of good twist bone weighting will result in twisting of the mesh, particularly at the wrist (see extreme example in the documentation).