Developer Shows Procedural IK System for Animating Six-Legged Spider Mech in UE5
Check out how Abdul Haseeb avoids the clipping issues typical of such animations.
Game Developer Abdul Haseeb showcased a system for animating a six-legged spider mech, eliminating the clipping issues that typically occur when animating multi-legged creatures.
The developer explained that hand-animating a multi-legged creature is a complicated and time-consuming task. Pre-baked cycles break, and feet clip through surfaces when the player walks onto complex terrain such as jagged ground, stairs, or steep inclines. As a solution, Haseeb opted out of the animation timeline entirely; the six-legged spider mech shown in the video above is driven entirely by procedural math and Inverse Kinematics in Unreal Engine 5.
The step logic is handled through array-based time intervals and modulo resets, ensuring the legs never tangle or overlap. Despite the complexity of the system, it runs at just 0.3 milliseconds per frame, which is under 5% of the total frame budget at 144 FPS.
Earlier, Abdul Haseeb showed a dynamic interaction system for a VR project, focusing on eliminating the need for manual animation presets:
As for ensuring realistic movement of diverse characters, also check out an animation study focused on the technical challenges of the task, created by Vladimir Voevodin, and read our interview with Martin Singh-Blom, Machine Learning Research Lead at Embark Studios, who explains how the team applied robotics research, AI programming, and physics-based systems to create more dynamic and unpredictable enemies in Arc Raiders:
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