Visual feedback/direct manipulation for IK constraints

Visual feedback/direct manipulation for IK constraints

I find it almost impossible to figure out how to set up IK constraints.

Just knowing which of "heading", "pitch", and "bank" went with a given axis (color coding) would be helpful (calling them x, y, z Euler or alpha, beta, gamma might help) but better yet having some ability to drag sliders in the 3d view would rock.

Where do heading, pitch, bank come from? Roll, pitch, yaw are the standard for most aviation options (which would be bank, pitch, heading), but it depends on whether your axes have Z going vertical or "into the screen", etc.

On the whole, directly relating rotations to axes seems more intuitive to me.
 
Hi,
HPB is the same as YXZ rotations. They are quite popular in 3D graphics (C4D, project messiah, Maya, ect. support them).
Mathematically they are almost the same as XYZ rotations, just the order of the rotations changed.
The advantage of HPB coordinates is that they are a little bit more intuitive (example plane, yaw (H), pitch (P), roll (R)).

Character IK setup will become much easier in v4.1 since it will offer an 2D IK solver like the IKRP solver from Maya or the 2D solver from C4D. With pole vectors and all the stuff. Then there will be almost no need for angle constraints anymore. At least for a simple character setup.

Bye,
Martin
 
Good news on the 2d IK so I'll wait for that.

I just checked and C4D is terrible in this respect. Not only does it use "HPB" (without any clue that H == heading) but it's visually linked to the X axis making it even more misleading (see first attached image).

I think the simplest thing would be to show HPB (and XYZ for that matter) color coded to the axes whereever possible. It's a little thing, but helpful.
 

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