Inverse kinematics in Blender

[Erin Talamasca]

Hullo! I'm having a play with animations in Blender - also using Avastar if that has any bearing. The description on the Blender website of how to apply IK to a bone structure doesn't actually... do anything. No popup menu from pressing ctrl-I.

 

Now wondering if it's a version/terminology issue - should I instead be looking at object constraints?

 

Literally only just found the second page so I haven't looked into it yet (and won't get chance now for a couple of hours) but I'm wondering if that's the direction I should be looking - if not, what am I missing in adding IK to my skeleton?!

[freston]

Hi, Avastar's character already has IK set up. Normally it's hidden out of the way but it's easy to enable: in the 3D view press N to bring up the properties pane, with one of the limb bones selected in pose mode you should see a section on IK controls in the Rig Properties part. There, you can show/hide the IK controllers and targets, switch on the influence, and have the IK match the current pose. 

All the bones also have targetless IK set up which means you can grab any of them and drag the limb around. You can control the length of the chain in the Targetless IK section. 

Of course you can always modify this IK setup or add your own on top. 

See http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/ui-armature/ and http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/avastar-animation/