Can't get limb IK to work

[mre8]

My puppet's arms do not seem to be responding correctly to the limb ik behavior - they are not bending as expected. When I move the arms up, the forearm show switches to pointing up. It kind of works when I drag the arm toward the body. Also, the limb ik seems to affect each arm separately. This could be because my arms are not exactly identical. Side note: is it possible or useful to put the ik limb behavior separately on each arm if they need different settings?

I've tried:

-Dave's tutorial

-Modeling my tags, etc. after Dave's examples

-re-rigging my puppet.. 

nothing!

I'm attaching my puppet (dropbox link) in case anyone is willing to take a look at it.

Link to DB puppet 

Thanks!

[simio]

I downloaded your puppet and dialed in some IK settings for each arm. Just the bend strength and elbow flip threshold.

First, make sure you assign the Limb  IK behavior to each arm individually. (ARm L and ARm-R)

Then try these settings in their behavior properties:

I hope this helps!

[mre8]

Thanks for checking it out. I tried what you suggested, but not getting the result I'd like.

Here's a video clip of Dave's IK Guy puppet.

Here's a video clip of my puppet with your suggested settings.

[simio]

I see what you're going for. Try these settings (you'll probably want to make swapsets for your hands, or these bends can look unnatural):

Play around with the bend strength and elbow flip threshold until you get it just right. Your rigging is correct.

[mre8]

That works! I wish I understood how Limb IK work "under the hood", then I'd have a better understanding of how the tweaking affects performance. I'm not always a big fan of twisting and sliding things until something works. lol..  Do you have any advice about your thinking that led you to these settings?

Again, thanks...

[ericc19576445]

I, 100% agree, CA is like navigating a field of land mines without a metal detector. Animation takes a long time, as we all know, and spending weeks, days, or even hours, troubleshooting (moving sliders, moving behaviors from one part to another, adjusting origin points, etc,) with zero documentation is a workflow killer.  Not to mention the slow processing of every action. Even just clicking undo on a fast rig takes like 5 secs. There needs to be documentation of the theory and logic of building puppets. Just like with anything else. You don't sit down to do calculus without knowing it or being instructed. You are basically forcing users to "write the rules" for you. You did this in the early years of Flash and it was a nightmare. Make developer style documentation, not videos on how to use the premade puppets. We all want to know how it works under the hood so we can have formed logic to our processes and workflows. Some of us don't want to play with the software, some of us want a tool that HELPS us achieve our goals. In it's current state, CA is nothing more than a toy.

[mre8]

Also noticed in the Limb IK tutorial, Dave showed his method for dialing in the elbow flip threshold. He put the puppet in a T pose then started adjusting the elbow flip threshold. At a certain point, the elbow began to bend and this became his setting. When I try this, my puppet's arms don't respond at all no matter which direction or how much a adjust the elbow flip threshold. By the way, he had his IK limb behavior on the puppet layer instead of each arm (I've tried both).

Thanks!

[simio]

You can assign the Limb IK behavior at the puppet level, but if you want more fine controls over each limb, I like to assign them at the arms.

I'm using a technique where you extend the arm at different angles and drag the hand inward toward the shoulder. (Here's a video screen capture)  This will reveal any problem areas, which you can then adjust bend strength or elbow flip threshold ... whichever one has the most effect. In this case, it was bend strength. (this is actually an improvement to the last settings I sent)

Seems like a good starting point for bend strength is 60%

[mre8]

Awesome. Thanks again

[HouHouHou]

I know this is an older post, but it helped me solve a similar issue now that Body Tracker is out, so thanks. Because I had the shoulders tagged in Body and not in the arms, Limb IK wouldn't work correctly. It needs shoulders, elbows and wrists in the arms, while Body Tracker needs them (or at least some of them) in the Body. So I tagged the arm origin points as shoulders too, and everything's fine.

Also, thanks, Simio for making me realize I could add Dragger behavior to individual parts and turn them off and on as needed!

[HouHouHou]

Or if tagging the exact origin interferes with something else, create a new handle next to it and tag it Shoulder.

[Xavier26591357gols]

You Literally saved me so much stress! I couldn't figure it out because I watched a tutorial saying to tag the body as left/right shoulder. I did what you did and tagged it in the arms as well and now it works! Thank you!

[ericc19576445]

THIS!!!! Most of the videos seem to be giving me misinformation. Adding shoulders and hips to the body didn't work. Adding them to the limbs did. I also discovered that adding handles to the legs doesn't work, but adding them to the body does. Can someone on the CA dev team write up some documentation explaining all of this stuff?