Keywords: Maya, Rig Control Curve, Control Rig, IK, Controller

Maya Rigging series of articles:

IK Handle Sample

Skeleton -> Create IK Handle.

Then select beginning joint, then select ending joint. This’s the simplest IK handle example.

Caution

Sometimes (depended your production specifications) the joint rotation may change automatically while creating IK handle.

This is because the IK system can’t know the base rotation of current joint.

Solution: Set Preferred Angle before creating IK handle.

All the joints that affected by IK handle need to Set Preferred Angle.

Fixed:

Rotate Plane Solver vs. Single Chain Solver

There’re two solvers to IK handle. Rotate Plane Solver is the default solver.

Difference:
1, Pivot of Rotate Plane Solver is world space, while Single Chain Solver’s pivot is local space.

2, Rotate Plane Solver will reverse the rotation if target angle was too large, but Single Chain Solver will not.

3, Preferred Angle is the prerequisite to Rotate Plane Solver, but Single Chain Solver doesn’t need.

As mentioned above, Rotate Plane Solver may reverse the rotation if forgot to Set Preferred Angle.

Control and Constraint to IK

Because the visualization of IK Handle isn’t friendly to animator, so we need to use Control to drive IK Handle.

Take leg IK handle as an example:

1, Create IK handles to foot joint and ball joint.

2, Create two new Control, named ctrl_foot_ik_l and ctrl_ball_ik_l.

3, Create constraint for foot IK handle and foot Control.

4, Now you can drive IK using Control.

But the ball joint has issue while moving follow the foot joint.

5, Create constraint for ball IK handle and ball Control.

6, Now the ball joint follows foot joint with synchronized moving.

7, Create constraint for ball IK handle and foot Control.

You will see an new attribute named Ctrl Ball IK L W1 had been created, this’s a switch to enable contraint or not.

Finally, we can drive rotation of ankle using ball Control.

Pole Vector

Create Pole Vector:
Select the Control to Pole Vector, then select IK handle, Constrain -> Pole Vector.

Then you can drive the IK in horizontal direction.

Caution:
The Pole Vector limits the max angle of IK handle that can drive while the moving direction is perpendicular pole vector direction.

Example:

Remove single switch in constraint

Select Control first, then select IK Handle, Constrain -> Remove Target.

This way can also delete other constraints, likes Pole Vector.

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