Character Animation tools
A detailed description of blenders character animation tools
August 15, 2001

Setting up Inverse Kinematics,

I am going to show you how to allow IK to work in pose mode, and therefor also with the NLA system I'll be covering further up in this tutorial.
First add a armature and make it have 3 bones, then name the bones accordingly, and also click the show names button(11).
Now while in editmode, select the heel and snap your cursor to it by using the shift+s menu(12) and selecting the cursor to selection option. Next add another single bone, and do the same for the toe(13). Now give the 2 new bones proper names(14).


Now go to posemode, and select the foot, then go to the constraint menu (15). Add 2 new constraints, make teh first one a "IK solver", and the 2nd one a "Track To:". Now as a target object for the IK solver fill in the name of the armature, and then as "Bone" fill in the name of the heel bone(16). As a target object fo the "track To:" fill in the name of the armature aswell, then as "Bone" fill in the name of the toe bone(17).
Now as a final step make the toe bone, the child of the heel bone, you do this by going out of pose mode, into editmode, select the toe and heel bone, and just select the heel bone as parent of the toe bone(18).

If everything went allright you should be able to grab the heel bone, and / or toe bone, and you now have inverse kinematics (the leg will follow the heel / toe bone).


continued on next page,

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