Sunday, July 25, 2010

Blake Rig - How to drive the hands

Animator's Question:

I am unable to animate Blake's hands intuitively using the mouse and instead am forced to use the attribute editor to get his fingers to move. It won't let me select his digits with the mouse.

Is it something to do with a mode he is put it? I think the modes are called "FK - IK" however I can't find a way to switch them or any reference to them in "How to Cheat in Maya".

Do you know how to change these modes and if it will achieve the desired effect?

5 comments:

Flash_Addict said...

THANKS FRANK!!!! worked very well and now im putting blake back to work :D

thanks again.

Frank said...

We have a great little animation community. This back (very quickly) from an SBIT grad:

"...to switch his hand to IK/FK there is an IK/FK option in the attributes editor, and i think its 0 for FK and 1 for IK. You have to select the ring close to his hand to get this to appear in the editor.
Animating his fingers was a pain in the backside, unfortunately his hands arent as easy to use as Max.
It just takes some getting used to. What you have to do is highlight which fingers you want in the atributes editor, and by clicking an dragging the middle mouse button left or right. one direction opens fingers the other closes.
Its one of blakes little faults for which we forgive him due to the fact he looks a lot like Linus."

Jess said...

Oh I remember having trouble with that too! But i remember i had to change the IK to 10 or something instead of 1. It took us a while to figure out why it wasn't working and that was why. Or maybe it was 1? I cant remember haha. Once you get the hang of the IK/FK switch it's not so difficult.

Frank said...

Hey Jess

The IK/FK switch you were animating was on the Max for Maya rig. On his arm controllers.

I recall it was because we were aiming to place his hands on the letter "A" in 'Animation'.

You bring up an important point as well. Sometimes the IK/FK switch may have a different value it can be set to, besides '1' or'0' in the channel editor. So it is definitely worth testing it out.

Most of the animators have experienced changing the values for adjusting the smoothing on Max's smooth mesh - the value in that case can be '0', '1' or '2'.

As with any new rig, I encourage exploration and sharing your discoveries.

Thanks for your input.

Danielli said...

glad to be of assisstance.