Power IK Solver Node

What Is a Power IK Solver?

The core of the plugin is the Power IK solver Animation Graph node.

It takes an input pose and a list of effectors. The effectors come with target transforms corresponding to joints in the skeleton.

Translating or rotating an effector pulls the affected joint, with its surrounding skeleton, towards the effector transform. The solver calculates the pose to reach the affected bones towards the new set of locations.

Solver Node

Basic Solver Setup

  1. Right-click in your animation graph and create a Power IK Solver node.
    Make Solver

  2. Set the name of the Character Root and Ground Plane Bone. See the Bone Name Settings for explanations of these fields.
    Set Roots

  3. In the details panel, click the “+” icon to add as many effectors as you need.
    Add Effectors

  4. Right-click on the Power IK Solver and click Refresh Node to make the effector pins visible in the graph.
    Refresh Node

  5. Drag off the pins to create Power IK Effector nodes. Set the Bone name of the effectors. Typically these are foot joints, but they can be any bone in the body.
    Make Effectors

  6. Connect the input pose and the output pose to the solver node.
    Connect Solver

  7. Compile the animation blueprint. Select the solver node. If everything is setup correctly, you should see yellow diamonds where your effectors are located.
    Yellow Diamonds

From here you are ready to drive the effector positions and rotations to pull the skeleton as desired. See the section on Power IK Effectors for more info.

Note on Blueprint Preview Window

The Power IK solver node will not affect your skeleton in the animation blueprint preview window. Typically, the effector inputs require runtime information. So the solver evaluates only while playing in editor, or in a final build.