Following the request of 1pepe, I have done some tests on the MBlab (NOT the IK one) armature, to see how that could be modified to work with a posing system much like the one used in Daz Studio.
I have considered these three features in the tests, pinning of bones, IK, and rotation limits.
For the IK, auto IK function of Blender can be used.
In order to get the pinning working it is sufficient to use two constraints:
- Inverse Kinematics Constraint on the bone preceding the bone we want to pin (e.g. if the bone to be pinned is hand.L, a IK constraint should be assigned to forearm.L with target hand.L); this will lock the bone in place, but it will still be able to rotate around its center.
- Limit Rotation Constraint on the bone we want to be pinned to limit the rotation too.
It should be possible to add a button in the MBlab menu to automatically add or remove a constraint, similarly to Daz.
In order to get natural rotations for the limbs and other parts of the body when the auto IK is used, the Inverse Kinematics rotation limits under the bone tab (need to be in Pose mode) should be assigned as well; if we want the rotation limits to work with manual rotation (‘R’ key) as well, a Limit Rotation Constraint should be used. If fact it seems that this constraint will not be considered while using the IK. So, setting both the Inverse Kinematics limits under the bone tab and a Limit Rotation Constraint should do the trick and work for both IK and manual rotation.
From the tests I have done, I think that the armature should be modified in two ways:
- For some reason the editing of location in the Transform Locks under the bone tab is locked, this prevents the auto IK from working; so the editing should be allowed.
- The IK works to the last connected bone, so, for example, in order to have the whole body move when the hand is moved, other bones should be added in the shoulder and hip regions to connect all the bones together. For example, adding a bone to attach the spine03 bone to the clavicle_R bone, setting this new bone as NON-deform and its rotation limits to zero in order not to mess with the existing weights.
I’m sorry I can not help for the programming, but I can’t program at all.
Some of my conclusions may be wrong, but I hope that this is useful anyway. Let me know what you think.