ICE Tutorial - IK (Inverse Kinematics)

[TwinSnakes007]

Just finished the video..will post it once its done encoding.

Here it is, an intro to ICE IK.


Comments/Suggestions welcome.

-TS-

[Hirazi Blue]

Thanks (for the other videos as well)!

[Pancho]

I'm not 100% sure, but the way you do it by assigning the kine.global directly isn't a good way. You should rather write the transforms to an attribute and each bone assigns its kine.global by itself by looking up the transforms. The way you present it will lead into problems sooner or later on a rig.

[TwinSnakes007]

I plan on doing a spider rig tutorial next.

[Hirazi Blue]

Looking forward to it...
If you're planning something elaborate,
maybe you might want to share some scene file as well...

[TwinSnakes007]

Looking forward to it...
If you're planning something elaborate,
maybe you might want to share some scene file as well...

I'm still researching it, and I may pop out some videos from those results first before actually doing the spider rig video.

Like, I need to find out how to include a neutral pose into the FK/IK blending, and also what role the StaticKineState plays in all this.

[Pancho]

I recommend to watch the videos for the rabbit rig before you head on doing your own tutorials.

[TwinSnakes007]

I recommend to watch the videos for the rabbit rig before you head on doing your own tutorials.

Thanks Pancho. I have watched the rabbit rig tut, and I didnt like it. The fact that you have to manually keep track of relationships thru ID's on custom properties is suicidal. I'll admit, I stopped watching it when he started running the scripts to set the ID's. That approach just seemed so brittle to me.

Since ICE is modular, there are various methods of achieving the same functionality. I believe that's why the ICE Kinematics docs says..

There is no universal recipe for making a rig. Each rig is a response to specific production needs. ICE provides great flexibility in this regard.

As read here: Ice Kinematics - ICE Rigs

As to the free tutorials, I'm more than happy to refund your time spent viewing them.

[Pancho]

You didn't understand the way it works yet properly. There's nothing you need to manually keep track of. The IDs work in the background for you. You never assign them directly or need to know them. That's automatically done with the script. And if you add new bones, you run the script again and nothing gets screwed up.

Your way of assigning kine.globals is pretty bad, as it prevents you from using groups and you always need to reference each envelope on its own. For tails, ears, fingers, that's a horrible way of doing these things.

As much as I like tutorials and people who are willing to spent time into making these, there's no point to make tutorials as long as you don't have a solid knowledge on what you are doing. Dig deeper first and I'll be happy to get new input from you. Otherwise you'll lead newbies in the wrong direction and that's not helping anybody.

Cheers

[Pancho]

Dead link!

[TwinSnakes007]

Dead link!

Fixed.

[TwinSnakes007]

There's nothing you need to manually keep track of

if you add new bones, you run the script again

I'm sorry, when I said the word "manually", I was referring to the English definition that meant you have to remember to do something, and then do it.

That's just my opinion, I didnt like the approach, so I'm looking for another way. Since ICE is modular by design, there should be an acceptable alternative to what was presented in the Rabbit Rig video.

The point of the video was to answer the question, "What does the 2 Bone IK node do?". I personally didnt know, so I researched it. I think the video successfully answered that question. You can apply the results however you are comfortable with doing, and I think that is the point of community generated content, you can take from it what you want and leave the rest without paying for it first and finding out you already knew 90% of the solution, but had to pay $49.99 for the other 10%.

[Pancho]

What page where you reffering to? The "egg" ik ice example? Your linking isn't going anywhere except the autodesk site.

I'd recommend to understand the rabbit rig as much as possible, to understand his approach thoroughly. You are right, there are many ways to do something and your example for IK is fine, but if you need to rig a spider or centipode, your run against a wall with your method. Also the direct assigning of kines might lead into evaluation problems later on with the different stacks.

If you manage to come up with a different approach for multiple legged animals I'd be more than glad to see an alternative way for rigging.

Keep it up.

[TwinSnakes007]

What page where you reffering to? The "egg" ik ice example? Your linking isn't going anywhere except the autodesk site.

It's the 2012 Online Docs: Contents - ICE Kinematics - ICE Rigs.

It just talks about the overall principles of ICE Rigging and how there is no "best practice" approach, only principles. They mention the Rabbit Rig as one example of those principles in action.