Future of forward/inverse kinematics?

#181

OK, this’ll sound very SF, but I was thinking of a system where you’d only draw over your character, in the 3D viewport, and all bones would rearrange themselves interactively, as you draw. Of course, while maintaining their rigidity. And you would have locks too, on any part of the body, and all kind of fall-offs, on many things, to help with the fluidity of posing/moving bones by drawing. And of course, all this would be very interactive and intuitive to use :slight_smile:
But you should control depth somehow… maybe, as you move the camera you’d only draw on one plane - perpendicular to the camera (but maybe with some freedom, maybe the pen’s pressure sensitivity could move the skeleton perpendicullary towards or away from you).

Back to Earth - I was hoping Maya 7 will have Motion Builder integrated. I like MB but i didn’t like the skeleton limitations you had when transfering from Maya 2 MB. I hope the integration is really solid, and we’ll have full flexibility.

#182

Hi all

maya is still not able to achive the perfect ik/fk blending , uptill maya 6 threre was bug,while blending when ikhandel is rigged i.e point constrain to nurbs controller…blending was not achived controller use to snap.
recently working on one movie project i made a rig with four sets of joints where is able to achive ik/fk blending but still not as softimage…
i am starting my next poject in maya7 i am full of hope to exploer may new thing is maya 7in char setup …

#183

I am very keen to know the results :buttrock:

#184

About pinning parts of the body and not to be concerned about the FK and IK methods: A while ago we had to test MotionBuilder.
IT DOES EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR! But unfortunatelly the program is good only for bipeds and quadrupeds. You can’t really make custom rigs. You can only extend an existing one, but in the end is still a compromise. And it has an extremely good constraining system.
As a summary: You can lock the rotation, the translation or both transforms for certain body parts. +it has full body IK.

#185

Might have been mentioned before but Mirai had this good IK-Fk system…or am i mistaken ???

#186

Unfortunately FBIK in maya 7.0 is far from being well integrated. Lots of problems especially when undoing… Realtime viewports and intant FK rig behaviour while pressing “Q” lack too of course. I doubt MB will ever be fully integrated into Maya. Maybe in a nextgen app that brings all the good things together. (Character Studio + Motionbilder + Maya + 3dsmax.)
It’s not going to be easy especially for a mamouth like Autodesk. But if they manage to pull it out, it will probably take over the industry as Maya did back in '97.

#187

I keep hearing this from various threads so I decided to check out an old copy of Mirai. I heard how it has this Inverse Forward Kinematics system. After reading through the manuals I found no mention of this system, only the regular FK and IK systems. I haven’t actually tested out the FK and IK systems yet, but after reading through the manuals I can tell you that Mirai’s kinematics system is identical to MAX’s old Interactive IK system(which is still in MAX). It’s a FK chain that is also driven by these IK end-effectors. There is no FK blending into IK(or vice versa) like in Maya. You actually animate on the bones, and every curve in the graph editor is just a rotation curve. Only the root node(the pelvis, COG) has translation. It even supports pinning of any joint just like MAX’s old system. It’s a really great system for animation IMHO because it allows the animator to concentrate on the performance of the character he’s animating and not get bogged down with technical things.

#188

“OK, this’ll sound very SF, but I was thinking of a system where you’d only draw over your character, in the 3D viewport, and all bones would rearrange themselves interactively, as you draw. Of course, while maintaining their rigidity. And you would have locks too, on any part of the body, and all kind of fall-offs, on many things, to help with the fluidity of posing/moving bones by drawing. And of course, all this would be very interactive and intuitive to use :)”

I read in a post somewhere that Disney feature uses a tech like that in their anim system, you basically draw over the bones to rearrange and tweak the pose. In that post someone else mentioned that puppetshop for 3dsmax by Kees Rijnen had some kind of similar feature. I haven’t used it and the sites www.puppetshop.com and www.keesrijnen.com are down.

#189

Hello, the switching act doesn’t seem to be keyable, so I can not make this working.

#190

dunno if anyone mentioned this but biped in max has an elegant IK/FK solution…u can grab a hand and animate ik or joints and go fk and its seamless with no switching sliders and doesnt feel like stopmotion although u can also do it in a posebased way if u want

theres not many things imiss about max but biped is very cool

#191

I am actually working on something similar to that using a dual-IK setup along a single joint chain, and I got it to work 99% except the damn elbow controller refuses to follow along with the IK movements of the arm.

I’d up a picture, but I can’t find the upload button right now.

#192

So reading through the forum, I think I should show the new system that I have been working on since finishing making a stable more fluid version of enhanced IK. I am testing out the final kinks.

I developed a translative FK system which basically makes the animator use the translations of the elbow controllers to rotate the upper arm and a wrist controller to rotate the upper arms X axis and the rotation of the elbow. This eliminates deciphering rotations in the graph editor and lets the animator move the arm to an exact position and lock it there.

i was looking to see if this technique would interest anyone so let me know what you think and I’ll have a vid link up by the end of the weekend.

I’ll try to get pinning and a revers Ik system working with it too. I never thought of that so it seems like a fun challenge.

#193

Ahhhh… YES PLEAS!

#194

Sorry it tool a while to post, but here are the links to the method I mentioned. I also am uploading some videos about Enhanced IK. There is a Creative Development course on Digital Tutors for more info on that. What it does is extend rotations through the joint hierarchies. For instance moving the feet forward will rotate the hips and joint through the center of the back to compensate for the movement. I’m hoping for some feedback on both Enhanced IK and TranslativeFK as I improve on them and prepare them for full production. Here are the Links to the videos below. while I’m sure internal software is more powerful then both for plane jane freelancers, I haven’t seen anything similar.

Video1

Video 2 sticky controls

#195

This is very impressive, I would like to hear the animators opinion on it…can u post simple character rig for that ?

#196

This is very impressive, I would like to hear the animators opinion on it…can u post simple character rig for that ?

I’m working with some animators now who are testing it out. I’ll be sure to post updates while I get this out of prototype phase into a fully working rig with enhanced Ik setup. Once that’s complete I will probably upload it somewhere for more testing. Right now though I trying to use all these crazy rigging mechanisms to getting some studio work for awhile.

Also thanks!!! anything you think it needs? I have a months worth of freetime on my hand to rebuild my reel so now is the time.

#197

Great, the question is? Can this solution compete the fk-ik classic rig? Can it be developed to have the best of fullbody-ik and stay friendy ?

#198

I think so, the other method I developed worked well in production and I did not understand it as I do now. If you are unfamiliar with “Enhanced IK” I just posted three videos since the ones on DT don’t really give people a chance to see the level of movement that is derived from a couple of controls. Tying these two methods together I think I can have a rig that’s more intuitive then the standard. Hopefully it will make teaching and doing animation that much easier without the need for extensive scripts or plugins. I included the demo videos below.

I’ve been using this method for awhile and I’m starting to see fullbody Ik and it becoming very similar. I think since people will know how it’s built it will be friendlier. here are the links to the Enhanced IK system below.

enhanced Ik intro

quick addendum video Enhanced IK 2

Enhaced Ik on a quadruped

#199

It is good method in Mirai, but in case of Maya I would like to see IK methods(solvers, especially ikSpringSolver) work properly rather then new features there … When all things work as suppose to do many, really many issues will dissappear. Especially ikSpringSolver as mentioned above. Pole vector doesn’t behave properly and scaling of joints aswell. I know I am off toppic little bit but I have to mention this thing here. We submitted the bug with scaling of bones already with no result. Now we prepare to do it again with very clear sample scene(simple leg setup with global scale transformation node with ability to stretch IK leg setup) with comparioson between RP solver(it works well) and ikSpring one … and at the end: if I am not wrong thanks to Maya’s prehistoric DAG architecture it is very complicated to implement features like bidirectional constraints, etc. …

#200

This is a little something I’ve been working on… actually figuring out how to make it work efficiently with squash and stretch was the problem. In the link below it shows the first stage of my new leg rigging technique. The knee doesn’t pop and the leg doesn’t need to stretch to make the calculations correct.

No pop knee explanation video

I am thinking about making a public release of a final rig so please leave me a comment if you have questions and like it if you think its a good idea.