FKIK

Yesterday was a hard day. I was battling with the rig, didn't really understand how to do things in a proper way. I could move the rig around and pose, but it was really unclear where to start if I want to animate him.

Later in the evening I asked my Friend Jouko, who's familiar with Maya, what to do. Where to start, what controls should I use, and should I use FK or IK controls. Forward Kinematics and Inverse Kinematics.

Forward kinematics is a term that for example, from shoulder towards the hand, is adjusting each joint in order to get to a certain point in space. Inverse kinematics does the opposite. With the data of the point in space, it adjust all the joints. So in animation, when I adjust the arm and the hand, I understood it's easier to use IK. And for the feet FK.. I can see how it behaves different, but don't yet really really understand what's the benefit when using one over the other.

Anyway, Jouko told me some really good stuff. One of the best is making buttons with MEL. And it was so simple, I had to laugh. I wanted to make a quickkey for the hip control. I opened script editor and clicked on the hip control over the character. In the script editor there came a piece of code that I painted with my mouse cursor. Then I dragged that to my shelf. Hah! And now I have a button for my hip control! Hahaa! In an instant I realized the possibilities of this action, what could I do with this, everything! If I make some complex combination of things, then I could just paint the code in script editor,  and drag.

Nice, very nice.