"Tuf Chic"

[Grendel]

Working on a Anime' women warrior, complete with ridiculously big sword that could not possibly be lifted by one her size and a brand new pair of Onitsuka Tiger shoes. If you can't dispatch someone wearing these shoes it just can't be done. Modeled in Hexagon, quick renders in C4Pro. Still alot of tweaking to do....

[Grendel]

Working on the IK rig for the girl and the headphone cord and mp3 player she is wearing. Using a simple IK setup with a couple target helpers I was able to make a segmented arm pick up two cubes and place them somewhere else using the skeletal helper for the cubes movement which gives perfect tracking to the object that is being picked up. I'm not very good at IK but I learned alot figuring this out. A simple animation is attached that's more of a proof of concept than masterpiece.

[loloallo]

It works good !

[ThePixelMines]

I'm a little confused on your explanation of the arm and cubes. The arm is skinned and equipped with IK? What are the "skeletal helpers" you use to grab the cubes? I usually have to fool the program into "picking up" or affecting other objects. Yours works out well.

[Grendel]

It's an interesting way to use IK driven objects to handle "dumb" objects, place what I call a "IK Handle" on the object. Would it be great to have a handle on everything to allow IK objects to just grab any object by the handle and manipulate its motion through the already existing IK helper that is driving your skinned object. You could have your characters actually pick up a ball and throw it. Well now you can, for a short time limited offer of $29.99 you can....... just kidding.

Attached are three screenshots that show the way I animated the arm/blocks scene at the top of the thread. The trick is to make a single bone for your "dumb" objects and position it towards the outer edges of your object and skin it, then make a target helper object for the bone to track. It's important to place the bone on the edge or even outside the object slightly so you will not get any intersections with your IK driven object, like a ball passing through the hand rather than resting on it. The target helper object can then be used to track something else (your IK target) and most importantly tracking can be turned on and off in the modifers tab under IK.

When I first did this I used target helper objects for the cube bones to track just because they are easier to distinguish in a scene full of bones. In a small scene though you would not have to use the target helper objects and just let the cube bone track the IK helper object.

I've also attached the scene file for the arm/cubes for viewing.

I hope this helps everyone, it's not impossible just "tricky".

[Grendel]

Here is another quick example of the technique used with the rig that Nichod has posted here. The drums are from the content cd. I just added the mechanical arms to the existing rig and used the "IK Handle" method on the drums to allow Doctor Octopus to grab and throw them. This was quick work for proof of concept, but if you take your time it could look pretty damn good for just an IK trick. This should help to make some cool animations possible.

[2Mylent]

Bravissimo!!!!

[dalboris]

thak you to share Grendel !

your technique works very well !

[Bluetones]

Excellant technique! I'm sure we all have wondered how to do this easily. Thanx again! :D