Parenting Weirdness

Support Basics & Interface
1

A satisfactory answer has not been found after searching on the topic “parenting” and so I post this question to the forum.

I am rigging a hand as per the instructions “Rigging a Hand or Foot” which are part of the Blender documentation. I also own the Blender 2.3 book.

I rigged the armatures for the right hand as per the documentation. It is tested and working correctly. The left hand presents examples of “weirdness” which I have read on the forum.

Example: The right thumb IK bone is parented to the hand.R bone and there is a dotted line connecting the two armature bones. The problems is the left hand.

The left thumb IK bone is currently a child of the second thumb bone. The problem begins when I change the parent, via the selection menu, to the hand.L bone. Instead of a dotted line joining the hand.L and IK bones, the IK bone enlarges and connects to the hand.L bone.

I check the right hand, hand.R, and the bones behave as per the instructions. The left bones, in the same configuration, are as described above.

Needless to say, I am left knowing nothing of the cause of this situation. I post this question here hoping one with knowledge or experience of this problem can help me.

Bob

2

Im going to guess that you ahve the IK button pressed on your IK bone. This button should actually not be activated on the Ik solver AFAIK.

The IK button means that the bone has an IK link to its parent. It also means that the bones base will be moved to the tip of the parent bone, so the IK chain is continuous. just deselect the IK button before you parent (don’t do it after you parent because the bone’s position change will not be reversed)

3

i wouldn’t use ik for a hand rig anyway - costs just too much CPU-time. better use fk to pose the bones and the NLA editor to animate/blend actions.