I have been watching all sorts of wonderful examples showing off new free rigs but I need help with deeper understanding of how animation is done with these rigs.
If a rig has IK and FK control and a slider to turn IK on and off, what exactly do you key? Is it the bones or the IK/FK controller or both and what about elbow target?
eg. suppose that I want to animate raising an arm, making a peace sign with the hand and waving the hand as a peace sign back and forth. So I imagine using IK to raise the arm by dragging up the hand. Then I imagine you turn off IK to make the peace sign and then also in FK to wave the wrist back and forth a little then turn IK back on to lower the arm. How do you key this?
and what about drivers for mesh deformers and shape keys?? Are you keying the drivers’ controllers? What do you key if you want to tweak a shape using the secondary controls?
eg. I want my character to smile and then I want the left corner of the mouth to twitch up twice, how would I animate that?
If you make an action, can you still use it but go into the curves and tweak part of it?
eg. Suppose I have a walk cycle that I want to repeat 4 times but on the third cycle I want the character to shake his left foot once and then continue in the cycle? Do I have to make a new action for the cycle with the foot shake?
Wow too many questions for a single mortal ! Let’s see what I can do.
You key the current slider, that’s it. Regularly it is a bone that belongs to the Character’s Armature, but it could be any type of object as well. What matters is you key the slider that you want to change. Obviously every rig has internal bones named IKs or FKs that you key for your action. If you set the slider to IK, then you pose with the IK bones of the Armature, the FK bones won’t work and viceversa ( Slider in FK then you pose with the FK bones of the rig). Elbow targets are used for IK chains ( generally ), for FK you do not need them since you can pose individual bones of the chain.
Also about your piece sign, could not followed it very well. IK are mostly used when hands rest on something, a table etc, You can do all your piece sign with only FK
and what about drivers for mesh deformers and shape keys?? Are you keying the drivers’ controllers? What do you key if you want to tweak a shape using the secondary controls?
eg. I want my character to smile and then I want the left corner of the mouth to twitch up twice, how would I animate that?
The drivers drive the shape accordingly on how they were set up. If you have a slider that makes your character smile then you key the driver if you want it smiling or serious, now if you want it to smile just on one side you must create a new shape key for each side from the original one. An easy way is to asign vertex groups for the left and right side of the character with weight =1, and the middle line with weight=0.5. Then copy the smile shape and specify the vertex group you want it to be applied to, left or right vertex groups.
Finally you must assign new drivers to the left and right side. This is very easy, but may sound complex if you don’t know what i am talking about.
If you make an action, can you still use it but go into the curves and tweak part of it?
eg. Suppose I have a walk cycle that I want to repeat 4 times but on the third cycle I
want the character to shake his left foot once and then continue in the cycle? Do I have to make a new action for the cycle with the foot shake?
If you have a walkcycle, then you just make other action with the foot shake “ONLY”. Then in your VSE you overlap the two strips, bones on the top strip will overwrite the same bones of the strip bellow, so the walk cycle at the moment will shake the leg. You must choose Blend In and Blend OUT to smooth the transition, a few frames each. In 2.5 the default is replace to combine actions, (overwrite). There are also other combination on the actions, as Add, multiply etc creating interesting effects.
Take a look at my animation:Package man, I made him dance two styles, then I create two actions only for the Arms combining them in the VSE. So switching among them I got multiple dancing styles with just a combination of actions. See this screen shot of the VSE, and watch the animation.
Well hope it help, too many complicated questions too hard to swallow at once. Keep it up my friend.
Thank you so much for your help, I am a long time admirer of your work! It seems that there is too much to learn sometimes. For #1 Fk/IK slider question: I am a novice at this, let me see if I understand your answers–>
Is there always a seperate set of bones for FK and IK? So if I turn on IK, do I key the position of just the IK slider and the controller bone at the end of the chain? If I use FK I key the FK/IK slider and then each of the FK bones? Do the IK bones then not interfere? For #2 drivers and secondary controllers and for #3 actions: OK I think I see, if I want something other than the original shapes or actions, then I must make a new shape or new action, I can’t just “tweek” it.
Thanks again, I will have to practice my dancing like package man, that is an excellent example.
