Hi. So ijust recently started using rigify, because I have quiet a few characters and I dread making armatures. Rigify has been a great tool. I mostly love how you can grab the wrist and move the mesh however you please.
I have run into a couple of problems. One of which being, I want to be able to move my rig limbs without the limbs exceeding their original lengths. Stretching my models’ limbs is fun, but I need it to not happen.
Also.
I CANT BEND THEIR FRACKIN KNEES!!! When I try to movie their feet around, the legs just shrink. When I try to rotate the joints and all sorts of abominable contortions ensue. Correct me if I’m wrong, but knee bending is pretty important to the whole rigging process.
I can help you with the immediate issues but I don’t know much about rigging…
The limb stretch is controlled, I think, but selecting the gear looking control on that chain and pressing n to bring up the side panel and find “IK stretch” and turn it off.
The knees are part of an IK chain designed so that you can pose the hips and have the knees respond appropriately also if you want to make a step you just raise the foot and the leg will work.
As I said before I don’t know much about rigging but it you want to pose the foot independently of that behavior you can pick the gear looking control and change the IK-FK slider to FK. Upon experimentation I found that the FK thigh will move away from the body and I’m not sure how that works.
I’ll try to solve your problem.
about limbs stretching:
press N to open right menu, click to “Item” there.
select your limb IK bone (aka hand_ik.L and hand_ik.R etc.)
You will see the bone options in right menu
Switch IK stretch from 1 to 0
Maybe that info will solve your 2nd problem with shrinking.
Also pay attention to option called “Toggle pole” it toggles knee and cubit targets.