So, this mainly only happens with custom animations I make, but whenever I try and work with IK targets they never seem to work in-game. I've been trying to work out how to get these IK targets to work for months now but I never seem to get anywhere other than the same loop as "Oh, I think I might try this and see if it works" and then it'd be "Oh well, maybe next time it would" and I'd just keep finding new ideas but they would never work, or they would but very faintly. But now, I've studied the Sim rigs on how they work, and I seem have a clear idea that there are several bones called "offset bones" in the rig that make the targets work. So, in this custom animation I made of a child taking a toddler out of a highchair, I've used an EA animation as a reference for the offset bones as well as constraints for them. However, when I finish and all that, I tested it in-game and I still get the same old gut-wrenching result. I'm quite tired now of trying to get them to work and being stuck in the same loop, so I just hope that there's someone out there that can help me just a little on this.

So basically, in this picture, the one on the left is in Blender, while the other is in-game.



As you can see, the targets I added using S3PE don't seem to be working because the positions (the rotation is somewhat fine) of the hand slot offsets are wrong, but I used an EA animation as a reference for the position, so I just don't understand why it's not working. In the other red circle near the highchair as well, are the info bones where the IK targets are currently "in action" and where you can set the influence, but the bones seem to be fine there as well.

Then, I tried adding IK targets directly to the bones in Blender but that doesn't seem to work either because the position and rotation of the hands that have IK are exact to the slot targets, which is not how the system appears to work in the game.



So, I hope this explains my problem since it's really bugged me that I can't use the targets properly, and if there's even a way to get targets to work on custom animations, because they do however, work on converted or some types of idle animations. I'd be really grateful for any help or more information about this

Hey @TheSweetToddler. I was wondering about this myself. I've been meaning to do some research on these IK bones for a while now.

Perhaps the slot bones in the RIG file are just default values? Like, maybe they're modified on a per-clothing item basis, so a hotdog costume would have a different waist offset than a tuxedo, for example.

Hurray! I've found someone else who's also interested in this subject

I really don't know, like, the only thing I know about them, from observing EA's animations, is that the offset bones (such as R_slotOffset, L_footOffset, rootOffset etc.) control where the targets go, I can successfully make an animation with just 2 targets (actually 5 in total) always "in action" and it would work, since I wouldn't have to worry about the info bones or the weird positions that the slot offsets go into when another target is in action. So I tried using and EA animation as a reference but it still doesn't work as expected.

I really still think it's (from our previous conversations ) that it's not actually stored in the CLIP file, because the CLIPtool script doesn't actually export the values. Probably because, which is how IKtargets on objects work, because they are "slots" on sims. This means, that there must be some default value that's used globally (Like a sim RIG file that define these) and since the kids/toddler one basically hold the adult one, it might be better to change that of course

OR it's just the case that the CLIP file does in some way store the values but CLIPtool just simply doesn't. Maybe it could be worth seeing what the Milkshape posemaker does?

@Lyralei Maybe, but you can definitely add them through s3pe, and like I also said, if you import an animation with IK targets, there's an option to keep them when you export them.
I did however, look into one of the Sim rigs from the fullbuild file, and I saw that they only have container slots and effect slots. Perhaps, if you copy the rotation and position of one slot for the slot offset, maybe it would work then?



Basically in the picture above, I've set constraints to the hands and the hand offset (slot offsets) so that they work in a way that would be similar to how an EA animation works, if that makes sense. As you can see, in the second picture the Sim's hands are at the side of their hips, whereas if there were no constraints, the hands would be rubbing the eyes. So the slot offsets definitely have something to do with adding IK targets, you don't have to be able to add them in Blender, but you have to know the exact rotations and positions of each slot target for the offset bones.

Hmm, I've never used the posemaker for MS, I could try.

Edit: The only thing is, while looking at the container slots in the Sim rig, they don't have the actual bone names so...maybe it won't work