Handling inverse kinematics: animation blending or math?

Question

I've been working for the past four days on inverse kinematics for my game engine. I'm working on a game with a shoestring budget so when the idea of inverse kinematics came up I knew I had to make it such that the 3D models bones would be mathematically changed to appear to be stepping on objects.

This is causing some serious problems with my animation, after it was technically implemented the animations started looking quite bad when the character was wlaking up inclines or steps even though mathematically the stepping was correct and was even smoothly interpolating.

So I was wondering, is it actually possible to get a smooth efficient inverse kinematic system based exclusively on math where bones are changed or is this just a wild goose chase and I should either solve the inverse kinematics problem with animation blending or don't do it at all?

Answer 1

Definitely solve it with animation blending. Its far easier. Also bear in mind that you may have to enforce limits on what is acceptable because sometime you may break the animations through outrageous IK movements. Constraints are your friend.

Alas, I can't go into much more detail as the maths behind IK has always left me dribbling ;)

Answer 2

First you have to study how everything works. Take a look at Assassin's creed. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it was the first game to ever implement inverse kinematics. It uses a piece of software from autodesk to do that. As Goz said, using constraints can very much improve the quality of your animation blending but you should also use inverse kinematics only when necessary.