Power IK Documentation

Welcome to the Power IK official documentation. Power IK comes in two flavors, an Unreal Plugin and a C++ SDK for integration into other software or game engines. This documentation includes information for both.

To see Power IK in action visit poweranimated.com.

Please report any issues or errors to support@poweranimated.com

What is Power IK?

Power IK is a full-body inverse kinematics solver that lets animators push and pull skeletons to dynamically and procedurally modify poses.

How Is It Different?

A normal IK solver operates on a single chain of joints by pulling them towards a single point in space. But with Power IK, the solver affects the entire skeleton with as many effectors as you like.

With Power IK, effectors are associated with a joint in your skeleton. When you move the effectors, Power IK figures out how your skeleton should move to reach all of them at once.

The final pose is the best compromise between all the competing effectors. If an effector is within reach, Power IK will reach it. If effectors cannot all be simultaneously reached, Power IK positions the skeleton evenly between them. If effectors are squashed towards each other, PowerIK will squish the bones into a smooth shape.

Natural Poses

There are many different possible poses that reach the same effectors; sometimes infinite. But Power IK attempts to achieve the most natural looking pose which is characterized as having smooth lines free from kinks; while distributing the motion across the whole body.

This is the same as minimizing the “energy” of the pose, which is what real-world creatures tend to do.