Converting an IK animations into a set of non-IK keyframes

[wallclimber21]

Hi All,

I currently have a model of a cyclist. To make the cycling animation, I added a circle curve, attached a pedal (cube) to it and create an IK by constraining the toes to the pedal.

So far so good: it looks really nice.

Now I want to export this animation outside blender. Here is what it tried to do:

Going full circle with the pedals takes 80 frames.
I start a frame 1, select all bones of the armature (in Pose mode) and press ‘I’ to create the keyframe.
The I go to frame 11, the bones follw the IK and again I press 'I" to create the keyframe.
Same for farms 21, 31, etc.

My assumption was that this would store the IK-calculated bone position in each keyframe, so when I export the skeleton based keyframes, I’d have the correct calculation.

Alas, this doesn’t seem work: the keyframes simply store the rest position instead of the IK calculated one. As a result, an export of the skeleton and the keyframes results in a static cyclist.

Any idea’s?

Thanks,
Tom

[harkyman]

Objects and bones moved by constraints aren’t really “at” they location - in Blender it’s an on-the-fly thing, so you can’t keyframe those positions. UNLESS… you hop over to the blender.org forums and grab the testing build found here:

http://blenderheads.ruicampos.com/CVS_Builds/windows/20051220_0100_orange.zip

It’s for Windows.

Anyway, when you press the I key to set a keyframe with this version, you get some new options. Choosing “VisualLoc” will set a location key at the actual visual location of the bone. “VisualRot” is still a work in progress.

Also, that version of Blender should not be considered stable. I’d open your file in it, set those keys, then get out. Keep working in your original version of Blender.

Cheers!

[wallclimber21]

Hi Roland,

After literally hours of reading messages in the forums, I finally found the solution. “Bake” was my savior.

I had already downloaded the 19-12-05 version of the CVS tree, but I found it a little bit too unstable even for experimentation.

Thanks,
Tom