lightwave IK or not IK

before i go head long into learning more about IK, does anyone use it in there model riggs or do you stick with the manual approach.from what i understand IK will help with creating the anims for positioning feet to floors so theres no overlap with the ground for instance. basicly more control and faster set up of anims.

im using lightwave and terrabits excellent converter, which states dont use nulls, but im thinking along the lines of setting up IK and nulls then scroll thru all the frames creating key frames for all elements this should take care of the bone co-ords so the animation will convert fully, am i wrong in my thinking as usual;)

Animating with FK only is of course painful... IK/mixed is usually best choice. You can use for example "bake IK/Motion" to bake all the IK keyframes in the animation after you have finished making all the animations.

Good rig is of course essential for natural & succesful character animation if it's anything more complicated than nodding of the head... without good base rig (with constraints etc), don't even bother. Here's one solution that makes things bit easier (and of course it's not free):

http://www.thomas4d.com/html/t4d_rigging_tools.html

going of the desk top images dvd, setting up IK doesnt look that difficult just time consuming, plus it looks like fun

all my anims to date have been FK and yeh it has its faults
baking the IK sounds the way to go,

thanks mustang

Hmmm... well at least the time spent on it is truly worth it, it will save you from thousand headaches later. Your first rig won't be perfect, and you probably realize halfway thru the animation making that you missed something critical in the setup and have to start all over again... but life is learning! :)



It is NOT... usually. :P

yeh i think its going to be worth the time spent learning


i must have a weird sense of fun;)