Hand/finger IK

For my Final Year animation I've been animating pairs of hands playing
various musical instruments. So far things have been fine with an FK
rig, where the fingers are animated via sliders controlling the bone
rotations.

I'm about to animate a pair of hands playing a piano and thought that
it would be better to animate the fingers via IK, where the tip
positions are moved and animated manually.

Is there a way to set up my current rig so that I can key the
positions of the tips, and then move the wrist and not have the tips
move with it? I've tried crating a null and parenting it to the tip of
a finger, but that doesn't seem to work(see attached picture). What is
it that I'm doing wrong?


Thanks

Why dont you send an ik chain down each, set of fingers from the first joint to the tip. To do this you need to use and iksolver.

Btw what software are you using - it looks like 3ds max 3!

Sorry, XSI. (I keep telling other people to state their software and then forget to state my own)

Here is sample scene made with XSI 4.2 fnd. I'm not sure is it simplest way to do, but anyway this is one way.

Thanks guys, that example was really helpful. I've never done IK properly before but now I understand it.

Cheers.

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