Bird Rigging IK Help

#1

Hi everybody, so i’m a little new to rigging, ive had a couple of classes and understand the basics but i’m getting a little lost, i have a few questions if theres anybody out there to help.

First off, I’m rigging a bird, mainly just the feet as those are whats only going to be in the shot, but I have basic bird geo for the body.

I had FK working fine but then the animator also asked for IK. I believe to do this (the way i’ve done it before) was to do three skeletons, one for FK, one for IK and one for skinning. Then you point and orient constrain the FK/IK to the skinning one. is that correct?

First main question.

  1. where do I parent constrain the controllers for FK/IK? is it to each their own skeleton, or to the final skinning skeleton? BEcause im getting errors when i try to add a controller to my IK skeleton.

  2. I have NOOO idea if my IK foot set up is right. My teacher said that it’s best for them to be built straight, but the birds legs are at a slight angle.

I had my FK joints following the bird structure, but if I built IK straight, do I have to match all three?

any feedback wold be soo helpful and appreciated!

#2

Hi
Constrain FK/IK to skin joint is correct
Leg IK/FK/Skin joint has to be in same place and ankle.
As for the controls you have to constraint to the parent control in the hierarchy and not to the joints.
Regards,

#3

thanks for the help!

I have another question now, if there are blend shapes does this effect painting the weights? do all the weights have to be painted on all of the blend shape models before I blend shape them together? My paintbrush has a big X on it

#4

I think it’s good practice to match all three skeletons so you won’t have popping issues when the animator switch from one to the other.

I’m not sure I understood question number 1. The FK controls should drive the FK chain (by constraint or whatever) and the IK control should drive the IK handle, not the skeleton. Is that your question?

#5

yeah that helps thank you!

I have another question now. when it comes to using blend shapes with a rig, I believe I had done it correctly blended it with the mesh and then make sure it was above the skinning in the input all (or below) i cant remmeber now which is the right way.

but when i moved the mesh the blend shape messed up the face pretty badly.

whats the basic workflow of blendshapes with rigs?

#6

Always make sure your blendshape node is created with the “front of chain” checkbox checked.
Also, I believe you should freeze the transforms of your target geos.

The problem is happening when you deform the mesh with controls or when you activate the blendshape?

#7

When I deform mesh with controls it was happening

#8

If you want to upload the scene so we can take a look, that would help a lot