Easter Project 03

One of the biggest new things I wanted to do for this rig was come up with something that had arms you could easily switch between IK and FK. Here is a slow transition between the two.

You can see that there are actually three arms, the FK bones, the IK Bones and the TRUE Bones. The mesh or skin is bound to the True Bones but you never actually animate them. They are constrained to the IK and FK bones in a way that can be switched or even animated. When the switch is set to 0 the TRUE Bones line up with the IK Bones, when the switch is set to 10 the TRUE Bones line up with the FK Bones. In this example I set a key on frame one with the switch set to ten and the FK Bones down by the characters side, then I set a key on frame 80 with the switch set to zero.

You can see that as the switch inbetweens between the FK and IK the TRUE arm starts to move away from the FK bones and then aligns its self with the IK bones. I connected the switch to the visibility on the IK and FK bones as well so that the FK bones automatically disappear as the switch changes over and the IK bones automatically appear.

NOTE: I didn't use the IK/FK switch system from the DVD it required that you use a supplied script that I wanted to avoid. I used the tutorial from the Rigging101 web site.