Hi there,
I’m kind of new to Motionbuilder, but things are going quite well. But the one thing I really find confusing is the lack of Up Vectors / Pole Vectors for Arms and Legs in the Standard FK/IK Control Rig.
Is there any Way to build a Up Vector on your Own? I found the Option in the Chain IK Constraint and it works ok there, but how can I use this in the control Rig (Where the IK is already set up)?
Is there any Workaround for this? I wonder how anyone can position the Arm in exactly the desired Position without an Up Vector…
Is this maybe a thing they did fix in MB 2009?
Thank you,
Raschko

Raschko 11 December 2008 08:33 AM

Hi there,
I’m kind of new to Motionbuilder, but things are going quite well. But the one thing I really find confusing is the lack of Up Vectors / Pole Vectors for Arms and Legs in the Standard FK/IK Control Rig.
Is there any Way to build a Up Vector on your Own? I found the Option in the Chain IK Constraint and it works ok there, but how can I use this in the control Rig (Where the IK is already set up)?
Is there any Workaround for this? I wonder how anyone can position the Arm in exactly the desired Position without an Up Vector…
Is this maybe a thing they did fix in MB 2009?
Thank you,
Raschko

you can move the knee/elbow ctrls or fk postion the arm even with ik and pinning turned on.

you have lots of control over the posing of the limbs.

fyi.. my blog has a free pdf covering reach and pin settings that will help you and our dvd class goes over animation rigging and how to animate in mobu.

Brad Clark
Co-Founder: Rigging Dojo-Teaching the art and science of character rigging
Author: Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging
The Character Animator Toolkit for Motionbuilder :available now:

Thank you for your answer.
Indeed, I by the time get used to pin the Wrist, move the Elbow, and unpinn the Wrist again, but I somehow still miss an Up-Vector Control…
btw: In the Meantime I bought your DVD, and it’s a great resource, thx for that…

ah ok, I would ask why you are unpinning the wrist. 

On a regular IK limb with a Pole vec. you would not be able to “un pin” it.  You should be able to leave the pinning on for T at lest. 

If you want to unpin it to rotate or FK the arm that is when I just hold “ q” down to temporally unpin all the nodes, so I can FK pose any part of the body with out having to worry about my pin settings.  When I am posing my hand is over the q key a great deal.  Also w and e to pin/unpin T and R so I can change my pins with out having to take my
eyes of my character. 

once you get use to the hot keys for pinning manipulation then it is amazingly fast to “re rig” the character as needed for a pose or an edit.  I do wish the had a good way to store pinning sets but you have to use python to do that * I can’t remember if I included that script in the masterclass notes or not.

*if your useing maya or maxc hotkeys instead of reg. motionbuilder then you might have to hit diffrent keys to unpin/pin and temp unpin all or you can change them to be what ever ones you want in the keyboard files.

Hope that helps,
Brad

Brad Clark
Co-Founder: Rigging Dojo-Teaching the art and science of character rigging
Author: Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging
The Character Animator Toolkit for Motionbuilder :available now:

oh that is a cool idea, handle based pinning, or pinning sets, like keysets hmm, I will bring it up.

Brad Clark
Co-Founder: Rigging Dojo-Teaching the art and science of character rigging
Author: Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging
The Character Animator Toolkit for Motionbuilder :available now: