[ Tutorial ] IK rigs and IK/FK blending

[Zachariah]

[video=youtube;Dn-PqHS20Uo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn-PqHS20Uo&feature=youtu.be[/video]
How to blend between IK and FK without detatching the rig itself, along with a general IK walkthrough

[Pandamobile]

For those who are wondering:

IK = Inverse Kinematics - The motion is generated by the end of the chain and transferred backwards down the chain (e.g, You move the hand controller, which then generates the wrist rotation, elbow rotation, and shoulder rotation)

FK = Forward Kinematics - The motion of the parent is added to the motion of the child (e.g, You move the shoulder, and the elbow and the rest of the arm will move by the same amount that you moved the shoulder)

A good way to think about FK without necessarily having a good concept of animation is to imagine an action figure or a doll with articulated joints that you can move. You manually pose each joint until you have the desired pose.

With IK, an example might be a robotic arm on an assembly line. The robot knows that it has to pick up a certain object in space, so it then needs to figure out exactly what angles the shoulder and elbow joints need to be at in order to reach that point.

[Daring_Robin]

Holy fuck I didn't even know about IK rigs until now, I was posing everything on its own. I wasted hours on simple animation! Killing myself brb

[editline]1st September 2012[/editline]

Oh and useful video btw

[PalmliX]

Dude you're a machine!! Thanks so much :)

[Doc Powers]

have my children

[BickenCH]

Now I can make gmod quality videos.

[Mystfit]

Yeah, my head met the desk repeatedly when you told me you figured out how to blend FK/IK without requiring massive script changes to the rigs.

Ah well, worked out for the best in the end!

[zero51]

The problem you described at around the 14 minute mark (when your curves were being demolished by new keyframes) can be avoided by enabling offset mode in the graph editor. It lets you create new keyframes without overriding the line between it and the neighbouring keyframe. But yeah, really useful video :)

Edit: Dang, I meant offset but typed spline.

[Zachariah]

[QUOTE=zero51;37598751]The problem you described at around the 14 minute mark (when your curves were being demolished by new keyframes) can be avoided by enabling spline mode in the graph editor. It lets you create new keyframes without overriding the line between it and the neighbouring keyframe. But yeah, really useful video :)[/QUOTE]
yeah I've since learned this and its fantastic.