Hi. I’m new to this forum (and somewhat to Blender) and I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m wondering if anyone knows of ways to automate FK/IK rigging of an armature? I’m trying to set it up on a few human models and I can’t help but think “there’s got to be an add on that does this for me or something” because of how easy it is to get totally confused.
I feel like posting this because I have yet to come across something in Blender that has been as involved and difficult as this. I can’t find a single video on youtube explaining the process without it going a million miles per hour, it’s bizarre.
i know such addons exist for blender but as far as if they are paid or free i have no idea, i do have two that i paid for but they are mainly for humanoid meshs, Im also aware of such software standalone from blender does exist (at least two that i am aware of) i dont want to name drop them as i dont know if that is allowed in the rules too tired to think at this point and im new here still
Do you mean an existing armature ? There’s Rigify, Auto-Rig Pro, etc. but these create a rig from scratch. If you’re looking to add an FK/IK switch to an existing armature, you’ll probably have to do it yourself. But it’s not very difficult, no worries. Where are you stuck ?
Yeah, I’ve been using rigify and parenting the mesh with the armature etc, all that works fine. Just getting the like, FK/IK wrist and elbow joints to do what i want feels so impossible lol. I duplicate the bones twice, do the bone constraint things with the controller, i don’t even know if im doing something wrong or if its just this difficult lol
Yes, you are doing something wrong. You are not using rigify correctly. Rigify is an auto rigging system. To use it, you add in a metarig, which is a template for the final rig. The idea at this stage of the game is to size the metarig to the character.
Once the metarig is adjusted to fit the character, then you generate the actual rig you will use for animating the character. This generated rig will have the FK/IK stuff for arms and legs, and a million other bells and whistles. To see what I mean, startup blender and delete everything from the default scene. Add in a human Metarig. In the Armature properties panel there will be a rigify section. Find the ‘Generate Rig’ button and click on it.
Once it’s finished you will have a new rig. That’s the one you want to use for your character. That rig will have all the FK/IK bones and controller bones. It gives you all kind of options and more controls in the 3D view’s transforms panel (n-key in 3d view) when the rig is in pose mode.
this is so frustrating