Auto-IK bug..?

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

Sometimes when I’m animating, Auto-IK seems to randomly become completely disabled.

For example, I’ll maybe leave Auto-IK on while doing some frames of an arm directly in FK or something, and then hit ‘G’ to grab the hand and it just rotates as if Auto-IK was disabled, even though the Auto-IK button is depressed.

Toggling the button doesn’t fix it, and it carries over if I save, close, and reopen the file. Eventually it will reset and Auto-IK will become available again, not that I know how or why. I’ve actually lost some animation a few times by having to revert to an earlier saved file due to this happening.

Has this happened to anyone else? I’ve been experimenting with things like constraints, stretchy bones and bezier bones; I’m curious as to whether it’s something I’m causing with these experiments (no cycles or anything in the console window, though), or if it’s an outright bug.

#2

LOL … no this isn’t a bug … it’s actually a great new useful feature in Auto IK . You can now dynamically change the IK chain length by scrolling with your MMB or with the pg up/pg dn buttons on the keyboard . So for example you can have the chain length to 1 … effectively making it FK … You must have accidentally scrolled after hitting the G key … You can see the Auto IK length displayed in the 3D header (when the Dx/y/z values are displayed) after you hit the G key .

… And btw another new feature with Auto IK is the fact that it now respects transform locks when calculating IK rotations …

#3

No, I know about the new chain length thing (which is way cool), but this is different. Scrolling the wheel and hitting the Pg keys is one of the things I try when the Auto-IK fails like this, but it doesn’t work, and doesn’t show the length in the header like it does when Auto-IK is working correctly.

I can’t imagine what this is; I’m going to spend some more time trying to induce it so I can post a blend.

#4

Sorry, I didn’t realize you already knew that … But this great new feature isn’t so sexy as particles and such and you need to read the release notes to find out about it … And I have been playing around with for a while now, and sorry no, I’ve never have encountered the problem you are describing … Do you have constraints/transform locks in your set up ?

… why don’t you post a blend of the rig that is giving you this problem ?

#5

I do have transformation locks, but since this was giving me trouble it seemed to have calmed down. Like maybe it was some cyclic dependency I didn’t notice; I have hope it’ll disappear in upgrading to 2.47, clean slate! If it occurs again, I’m going to give up and just post the blend.

Thanks for your help Vertex Pusher!