Smartskinning and IK?

[Gabe]

Hi,
I'm rigging a character using IK. To get good joint bends I'm using morph positions that are driven by expressions. This technique is the one known as 'smartskinning'.

Anyways, the one last technical hurdle I'm having is to get the automatic deformations to work with fulltime IK. When I handkey the bone positions the morphed joints automaticly fade in and out to correct the joint deformation.... but when I move my IK handle nulls it does not happen automaticly.

So, is there a way to make my smart skin expressions work with IK or am I going to have to go in and hand key either the bones or the morph mixer frames? It's not the end of the world if I have to do it the long way, but full automation sure would be cool.

Thanks in advance.

-Gabe

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by Gabe
Hi,
I'm rigging a character using IK. To get good joint bends I'm using morph positions that are driven by expressions. This technique is the one known as 'smartskinning'.

Anyways, the one last technical hurdle I'm having is to get the automatic deformations to work with fulltime IK. When I handkey the bone positions the morphed joints automaticly fade in and out to correct the joint deformation.... but when I move my IK handle nulls it does not happen automaticly.

So, is there a way to make my smart skin expressions work with IK or am I going to have to go in and hand key either the bones or the morph mixer frames? It's not the end of the world if I have to do it the long way, but full automation sure would be cool.

Thanks in advance.

-Gabe
You have to either bake the IK onto the bones or use the expressions found in the motion panel because they do see IK.

[hrgiger]

Yeah, I think this is a major drawback. It's too bad that we can't yet access the bones rotation values being driven by IK. Hopefully we'll be able to eventually natively in LW or maybe another solution will be implemented.
Baking like Larry said is one solution. Also, Lernie who you'll probably find hanging out a lot in the lscripts forum has a script to access rotation values from Ik.

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by hrgiger
Yeah, I think this is a major drawback. It's too bad that we can't yet access the bones rotation values being driven by IK. Hopefully we'll be able to eventually natively in LW or maybe another solution will be implemented.
Baking like Larry said is one solution. Also, Lernie who you'll probably find hanging out a lot in the lscripts forum has a script to access rotation values from Ik.
Remember you can access IK info using expressions if you use the expressions found in the motion panel just above follower. :)