I've seen two basic ways to do IK animation. One involves placing an empty at each joint and the other uses null bones which are manipulated in pose mode. Are these two methods fundimentally different, and, if so, which one should be used in what kind of situation?

Hey, I use the null bone method and it works really well. My reasoning is that with null bones I can use the action editor. With the action editor you can see, move and manipulate the keyframes for all of the null bones in your scene at one time. It makes animating and tweaking go much faster and smoother. When you need fine precision tweaking you can select each null bone and go to the ipo window to edit the individual curves.

Because each bone in a set can not be treated as it's own object I have the null bones move empties which in turn do the ik and track to constraints on my rig.

If you have any more questions let me know
-steve

tokkot wrote:

Are these two methods fundimentally different, and, if so, which one should be used in what kind of situation?

the real difference is that with bones you can use the "animation strip" feature of blender. that is, you grab a couple of keyframes from the action editor and make an animation strip (similar to XSI). those strips can be moved around, blended and so on - so you have a very powerful, non linear animation (NLA) system on your fingertips.

actually the action editor is available for both objects and armatures, but the possibility to work with animation strips is only available for armatures. i hope this get's "fixed" in the future, so that i can use custom control objects as ik/whatever constraints - more a cosmetic issue.

steve_t wrote:

Because each bone in a set can not be treated as it's own object I have the null bones move empties which in turn do the ik and track to constraints on my rig.

no need to do so - you can use bones directly. i think too much levels of control objects mess things up and make rigs slower.

greets

marin

solmax wrote:

i think too much levels of control objects mess things up and make rigs slower.

Indeed it does.

Martin
_________________
Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon

Last edited by theeth on Sat Feb 21, 2004 6:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

soo can someone tell me how to use a single armature in a set of armatures as a target for a track to or ik constraint?

Thanks,
Steve

In the Ob field of the constraint, type the name of the armature object. Then, a bone field will appear.

Martin
_________________
Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon