Tob's Blender 2.5 IK/FK Leg Rigging Tutorial 2/2 Drivers or Set Driven Keys

This is the second part of a two part video tutorial about setting up an IK/FK Switching Leg Rig in Blender 2.5 Alpha 0. Alpha 0 is the first testing version of the upcoming Blender 2.5.

IK/FK Switching (Inverse Kinematics vs Forward Kinematics) allows you to use both control methods in your animations. IK is useful for making the end of a chain of bones (like the foot is the end of the leg chain) stay in one place. FK is useful for making your animations follow nice arcs.

This tutorial series builds on a previous tutorial for creating a nice Reverse IK Foot Rig, but it also stands on it's own. You can watch the Reverse Foot Rig tutorials here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tApdSx...

You can download a complete rig that's uses the switching mechanism here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=172128

You can download Blender 2.5 Alpha 0 here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-25-alpha/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• set driven key
• Blender
• 2.5
• rigging
• tutorial
• foot
• leg
• rig
• animation
• roll
• IK/FK
• IK
• FK
• inverse
• kinematics
• armature

[plwoods08]

Excellent tutorial again :) Ive been trying to get IK/FK working for ages :) I take it this technique can aslo be used for arms ?

[tobuslieven]

Glad the tutorial was useful : ) Yep it's a very similar process for IK/FK arms.

[eyeonus]

Also, one thing you might find useful: When you first duplicate the bones to make the fk and def sets, it's useful to do "g x 1 [enter]" and "g x 2 [enter]", then when you want to put them back where the ik set is, you can just do "g x -1 [enter]" and "g x -2 [enter]", instead of going through all that trouble with the mouse moving you have at the end of the video.

[eyeonus]

Okay, from following the vid, I've figured out what is causing the ik/fk tools to not work on your downloadable rigging in Blender 2.54 Beta:

"Target" has been changed to "Var", so all the driver targets are gone. Also, the "Index" has been replace by adding the axis to the path, so, for example, the path for the var for the driver for "thigh_def_l" on Gobo is "pose.bones["ikfk_foot_l"].loc­ation.x".

Now to go fix all that. Ug. If you'd like, I can send you the v2.54 fixed version when I'm done

[ScaroDj]

@Ickathu

That I know, in 2.53, "Add Target" is "Add Variable" and you have to choose "Transform Channel" instead of "Single Property", then you select the object -> armature -> bone -> axis and you have to check the local space box.

[Ickathu]

Ummm.... This doesn't seem to work on Blender 2.53Beta... Any ideas why?

[ScaroDj]

Thank you SOOO much for this.... I wouldn't have guessed this procedure in a thousand years.

As a side comment, I always have problems hearing tutorials in my laptop, I think I'm not the only one. Would you speech up or normalize the volume level of the video in future tutorials. (I'm subscribing for sure!)

[snowcovered99]

thanks for making this tutorial, how they changed the drivers system from 249 has been my least favorite part of the 25 transition. this got me back on my feet and a blender rigging dude. but Speak up sunny.

[aceofspades02]

is there a way of doing this in 2.49?

[mapflu]

Thanks... again.