Post 08 - MAJOR Human IK issues!

Rotational Issues

Once established, I tried to animate using the stepped curve pose to pose method as I did with the first Maya walk cycle. To my horror, I couldn't edit the tangents of any rotational transforms in the Graph Editor. This was a major issues for me as I wanted to use the Graph Editor a lot and it is a big part of CG animation. I made a post on the CG Society website. The thread conversation between me and Shawn McClelland (Maya Product Designer: Autodesk Canada) can be viewed using this LINK.


The initial problem was that the rotational Human IK setup was set to 'Quaternion' and not 'Independant Euler'. This allowed me to now edit the tangents for all transforms from the Graph Editor. However, I asked him his advice on the Human IK solution as I found that using the Full Body/ Part Body IK setup was slightly counter intuitive when trying to create accurate poses (e.g. when trying to copy transform data from one foot to another would result in a slight snapping of other joints and so was very difficult to get full control). As I was finding it hard to do this, I asked Shawn's advice on the Human IK solver.


He confirmed that it is used mainly for re-targeting motion capture data, as well as being a system to quickly create non destructive editing of motion capture data. This would involve adding many layers of animation and so would increase the amount of work needed to be out into getting smooth and controlled results. This was a big concern of mine, but the advice and responses I received from him were extremely helpful and influenced me on my next move, which is explained on post 09.


A link to the video showing this problem can be found HERE, as well as below.




Robert Dyke / Shawn McClelland thread - LINK
Human IK / Graph Editor issues clip - LINK

Thank you to Shawn again for his help :-)