PTS Feedback Thread for Inverse Kinematics (IK) System

CadaCosa

IK... I turned if off within 5 minutes. My character felt and looked like it was running in slow motion. My character's foot was clipping through objects upon which I jumped. So overall not going to play with it turned on.

NightHawkRaven

I've played with it on, I'm finding myself getting disorientated during play which is probably because it's different to what I'm used too.

HeroOfNone

I feel that when going from one incline to the other three was no transition and the balance was way off. I think if you want this to look more natural you'll need a tilted run animation added in and a short transition animation. It's a neat concept, needs more polish.

feyii

I played with it on. In general I think this looks quite good. I only noticed that the character looks weird when walking/running up stairs (or anywhere up), because their whole body is tilted backwards. Common sense would say they should fall down when trying that.

Goshua

Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on)
Off

Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
No

Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
Awkward movement in stealth, extreme angles/ reaction to incline

Do you have any other general feedback?
Not bothered by floaty glitches and the like as long as they don't interfere with gameplay. IK kind of does at the moment.

Sakiri

It's mostly okay, but I'll echo the above statements about inclines.

Normal people don't bend back like that when going up a stairway. if anything, they lean forward to keep center of gravity around the ankles.

Rinmaethodain

Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on)
- Played with on

Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
- yes and no (explained below)

Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
- character behaved in unexpected way, he would bend unnaturally when climbing or standing on hill, when sprinting forward he would bend forward almost faceplanting on ground

Do you have any other general feedback?
- when standing still on side of mountains i noticed that with IK system my character constantly tries to be aligned perpendicularly to the ground, in real life humans try to stand straight to keep balance, to achieve more natural look i believe that character should aim to align parallel to the global gravity vector (assuming there is one for physics engine)

- as for running, is it true that people adjust their centre of gravity and bend forward when running but there should be a hardcoded limitation on how far in game character can bend to keep it natural

TimidGazelle

I actually really liked it.

Before it always felt weird floating on surfaces, or having one of my feet floating while on a hill.

Other than running down stairs at an awkward angle, I can say it will overall improve the game significantly in my eyes.

sebban

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the foot IK system. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on)
• Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
• Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

* On
* No
* Character leans too much backward when going up stairs and too much forward when going down stairs. Doesn't work properly most of the time, like when standing halfway on small platforms etc.

Elderkhaj14

Played ON and OFF prefer it ON but need to fix the Stairs / posture angles!!!

I think this is a great bit of animation.. you would NOT stand with both feet/legs at the same angle on uneven ground .. so it adds realism. The bit where it gets scary is when going up and down stairs...here I agree with what others have said:

the body positions should be reversed: IE when going UP stairs the body needs to be be leaning slightly forward and NOT leaning back .. otherwise you would over balance onto your back and or head!!

Of course the reverse it true when going DOWNstairs.. you would need to be straight or very slightly BACKwards otherwise you would tumble down the stairs headfirst.. wearing armor and carrying shields/ swords is VERY heavy.... voice of experience from LARP here it HURTS!!!!



Other than that LOVE IT!!

sward_games

Nice idea, but the lean-the-wrong-way posture when running on slopes falls right into uncanny valley for me. So it got turned off almost immediately. If that bug gets corrected, I'll give it another try.

Sakiri

It looks honestly like they're using the system Skyrim uses, but the navmesh is closer to the actual plane on x/z axis so there's less floating.

Elsonso

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the foot IK system. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on)
• Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
• Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

1. I played with this ON. I never turned it off.

2. I really noticed no big difference during play. I forgot it was even there. I had to remind myself to pay attention to answer these questions.

3. Running was a little different right at the start, but I adjusted. I noticed odd ankle and leg positioning when standing on some inclined surfaces. That means toes up at an extreme angle, legs together, where a normal person would have one leg bent at the knee and the foot "uphill" from the body. Occasionally, I noticed the character leaning to one side or another in such a way that a normal person would have to move a foot to retain balance. This mainly happened when the incline was slight and passing from R-L or L-R through where the character was standing. Running did occasionally cause the character to tilt and wobble slightly, but mostly I didn't pay attention to it.

4. Aside from a bent knee from time to time, and ankles turned so that the feet were not perpendicular to the legs, I did not see a great deal of improvement. Feet still do not touch rock, when standing on rocks. Feet still sink into things. I guess it seemed natural enough, since I forgot it was even on. I am used to odd foot positions in this game, so I might be desensitized. I noticed that NPCs did not use this more than I noticed the character did use this.

Just to be clear... The character may have wobbled, but he never fell down.

Elsonso

lordrichter wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the foot IK system. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on)
• Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
• Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

1. I played with this ON. I never turned it off.

2. I really noticed no big difference during play. I forgot it was even there. I had to remind myself to pay attention to answer these questions.

3. Running was a little different right at the start, but I adjusted. I noticed odd ankle and leg positioning when standing on some inclined surfaces. That means toes up at an extreme angle, legs together, where a normal person would have one leg bent at the knee and the foot "uphill" from the body. Occasionally, I noticed the character leaning to one side or another in such a way that a normal person would have to move a foot to retain balance. This mainly happened when the incline was slight and passing from R-L or L-R through where the character was standing. Running did occasionally cause the character to tilt and wobble slightly, but mostly I didn't pay attention to it.

4. Aside from a bent knee from time to time, and ankles turned so that the feet were not perpendicular to the legs, I did not see a great deal of improvement. Feet still do not touch rock, when standing on rocks. Feet still sink into things. I guess it seemed natural enough, since I forgot it was even on. I am used to odd foot positions in this game, so I might be desensitized. I noticed that NPCs did not use this more than I noticed the character did use this.

Just to be clear... The character may have wobbled, but he never fell down.

Ok, so someone told me to take a closer look at stairs. Walking up and down stairs with IK turned on a nice. Seems to work very well. Running up and down stairs is a little freaky. The character tends to tilt perpendicular to the plane of the stairs and does a little "flip upright" at the top of the stairs. It reminds me of a carnival bb gun target. Sadly, now I see it all the time, when I never noticed it before.

Savinder

Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on):
I've played with it on for the purposes of the test

Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
It varies. More in the general feedback.

Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
I haven't encountered anything that looks like a bug or had any particular movement-related issues I can think of

Do you have any other general feedback?
My general feedback is that Inverse Kinematics work well when the character is stationary or walking, but look pretty absurd when running/sprinting up or down any incline: a very small amount of character inclination when traversing such terrain is fine, but there needs to be a maximum value set to prevent the absurdity of someone running down a slope in a way that looks wrong (because in a real scenario the character would lose balance and fall down).
If such a maximum value were to be implemented, this would be a nice feature that would make a character look more natural on uneven terrain.

Lunachik

Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on). On

Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing? I have to say I didn't notice any difference, but I see that as a plus, as it fit seamlessly. I never really had complaints/issues with the way the game handles these things.

Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on? None that I noticed.

Do you have any other general feedback? It really didn't stand out to me that something was changed.

ofSunhold

I keep thinking I'm going to get used to this, but the running animations are so awkward. They seem to be fine if my character is on a level or near-level surface, but when the ground angle changes... not so much.

Can report though that jumping off things is smooth. I haven't hung in mid air once. Hm... I wonder if toppling charge's animation is less horrible with this active? I'll check.

Btw, thank you for removing the terrified scream every time I hopped off a rock. (I know it's been several weeks, but still.) That was a nice QoL improvement.

Avran_Sylt

Eeeek!. Just hopped onto the pts, noticed that there was an update to the IK system even though it wasn't mentioned in the Patch Notes. Startin to love how it works now, since you're no longer always runnin' like a smooth criminal.

Some nitpicky feedback follows:
While running/sprinting, would you be able to add in player 'bob' such as found in the walk animation cycle? (the one you've got to bind a key to toggle in order to access)

Edit: the bob when walking up/down terrain.

Perhaps oscillate the torso height between two values, with the high being when the character has 'sprung' from their one foot (and are bringing the other foot in front), and the low being when the character's lead foot is planted beneath the body?

Then to help with the hill smoothness nitpick, have this oscillating value be effected by the incoming terrain? I.E. whatever height value you get to cause the lead foot to change where it is planted vertically, use this value to increase/decrease the oscillation accordingly.

Currently the running/sprinting animations feel unnaturally smooth, especially when running/sprinting up slopes, it's like you're gliding up them, not to mention your character begins to do some awesome squats, since the player model never "pushes" up against the ground.

Edit: though then this presents the issue of the player "jackhammering" up slopes and what not... ugh. Would you be able to cause the player's "sprung" animation (when the player's feet are not touching the ground) to last longer based on speed? allowing a sort of "glide" period where the player's feet are not rooted to the ground? Would that be possible? God, I'm asking far too much.

Edit: Then allow the oscillation maximum to be effected by both the incoming value and player speed?

Avran_Sylt

Right, so while walking/jogging/sprinting up slopes, the player's body get's forced downward somewhat during the initial 'climb', more easily spotted while walking, but also noticeable while running.

RaddlemanNumber7

I won't be using this feature.

It causes increased clipping of lower legs through costumes like robes and dresses.

Most of the time there is no visible difference in the characters stance, and when there is a noticeable difference it is merely that the character has a different foot hovering the air when standing on steep or uneven surfaces.

Avran_Sylt

Yeah, as
@RaddlemanNumber7
Noted:

It seems that whatever nodes Robes are using are not properly matching the legs, seems they are not affected by the IK system yet.

Noticeable while going up or down any incline. And most notable while going down an incline

You get some really weird stretching effects.

Avran_Sylt

Y'all are probably aware of this, since the stretching is gone (Only while walking), so you're looking at that area, but the hems of robes/costumes clip with the calves/knees of the player while going up/down an incline. (also, nice skin boots, and dayum, nice work so far)

Avran_Sylt

Right, so the Jog animation causes robes to have stretching issues with the legs (maybe an issue with the knee node?). The walking animation is just hunky dory apart from the robe hems clipping. The Sprint animation just has the issue that the robes are not stretching to cover the unmodeled parts of the thighs.

Argonian(Female) Jogging (Best Example):



Other examples:
Khajiit (Male/Female):

Altmer(Male/Female):

Bosmer(Male/Female):

Breton(Male/Female):

Orc(Male/Female):

Redguard(Male/Female):

Imperial(Male/Female):

Nord(Male/Female):

Dark Elf(Male/Female):

Argonian(Male/Female):

Eiagra

Stairs is what stands out to me the most. Is there a way to have the IK use the appearance mesh instead of the physical mesh so that the feet land on the steps instead of the invisible physics ramp?

Avran_Sylt

While unsheathed your character will still have the normal bounce going up and down angled surfaces, however this dissapears and you get oddly smooth animations when you sheath your weapon(s) and go up and down inclines.

Avran_Sylt

I should mention the above post refers to small inclines. the bob is still present on steep inclines.

Elsonso

They changed stuff with the build on Live. The character does not lean forward and back as much. However, at some point, we started clipping into inclines in the game. Going down stairs, for example, the feet clip into the steps. I don't recall it being as bad on PTS, early PTS, as it is now.

Preyfar

The biggest problem with reverse IK is it really shows where ZOS cut corners. The in-game geometry uses invisible walls for players to walk over them even in some really basic scenarios. Reverse IK makes these issues stand out dramatically because you'll be walking over something seemingly flat and one of your legs goes up a foot or so, or you just start floating on something that wasn't quite there.

Flat surfaces are never truly flat. You seem to either hover just above them or your feet sink below them. This is especially prevalent in Craglorn, and it looks bad. I love the Reverse IK system, but ZOS needs to clean up some of these random invisible walls OR find a way to make geometry behave the way it's supposed to.

And yes, I /bugged this on PTS... not sure if ZOS is reading the closed Morrowind PTS feedback still.



You can clearly see it's definitely invisible walls over the slopes of the rock geo. Floating over everything really makes the new system seem really unnatural (more so than the typical "floating over the edges" in games because your characters have a footing on something).

Rickter

• Did you play with this on or off? (Note that it defaults to on)
  
  It does not default to "on" but i turned it on and i love it.
  
• Do you feel that the IK improved your overall experience while playing?
  
  YES
  
• Did you experience any issues with IK when it was turned on?
  
  NO
  
• Do you have any other general feedback?
  
  I am really glad to see this feature in game. It adds a subtle realism that is befitting on an elder scrolls experience. Many games dating back several years have featured this system and I am glad to see it finally in ESO. ESO is a cut above the rest and I truly appreciate the attention to detail that lets me know that you guys are producing a passion project as well as a premium game experience.