I have this online game where getting shot is pretty often. Now, suppose this character got shot but he didn’t quite die yet, or he didn’t die right away. I want him to ragdoll, but not just flop to the floor. I want him to try to… keep his balance, one might say he shall stagger,to clarify it, how would one go about making a ragdoll stagger?
I’m doing a crude version of this. Making the character really imbalanced without creating specific animations probably isn’t possible.
The standard character locomotion techniques don’t utilize any balance component and the skeleton motion is really just a movie playing within the character capsule. Even with IK the character is really just a puppet on strings.
What might work for you is to blend in some partial ragdoll for all major joints above the pelvis. This will make the top of the character look unsteady and adds an element of floppiness that isn’t scripted. For the lower body you might consider blending in additive but sloppy versions of the locomotion animations - or even adding a touch of ragdoll to one leg for a limp.