Between IK and FK

[Mwai Kasamale]

Hope this helps.

Basically its a kind of FK/IK rig that allows you to use the Nulls to animate using FK and the Black boxes to control IK as normal. The ring is something I add to all my rigs as a reset rotaion null which will reset the rotation of anyhing parented to it.

again, hope this helps
http://benkas.homestead.com/files/FKIK.rar

[NanoGator]

Hmm

The way I think of it, FK's about bending the bones, and IK's about straightening them out. For example, I would use FK to animate a character waving his arm, but I'd use FK to have the character pull something.

I'm not sure quite how helpful that answer is. It helped me decide that the use of either feature is more about what the character is doing than about the configuration of the initial rig. I wouldn't be surprised if you floated in between them both.

[SplineGod]

To be honest if you dont have a strong animation background either way can be just as hard. Typically IK is used when parts of a character need to stick to something like feet to the floor.
I dont always use IK on the upper body unless the hand needs to be able to stick or slide along a surface. Other then that I go with FK.
Its also harder to get overlapping motions with IK since that is something that is propogated typically from the root out the the end. IK works the opposite of that. Sometimes IK can help pose things faster. If I do that I sometimes bake the IK onto the bones and tweak further using FK. Most of the time its personal preference. :)
A good rig will allow you to easily pose it and be stable while various parts are being posed. It should also be stable between poses. Posting an arm , elbow, knee, foot etc shouldnt break the pose of any of the others.

[Mwai Kasamale]

Yeah, I hate using that muscler plugin, takes too much control away from me, but this is simple enough for most simple things, I was in the middle of doing a shot for a skydiver and didn't have much time before we had to start rendering.

I usually tend to animate using more expressions for DYNAPRNT'ing to fake sticky IKFK switching but this tends to work for simple stuff, a punch or the shooting of a gun.

Nano, Sorry to hear about your loosing your job hope things workout and you out a wicked Reel when your done.

[NanoGator]

Thanks Mwia. :)

I think things will end up okay.

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