This video reviews one method for controlling the Pole Target in an IK Setup, there are other methods and workflows, but I prefer this one. It is actually a technique I learned in Maya shhh don't tell anyone :)
Thanks, just the little information about where the IK is targeting the pole (x axis) was crucial to fix my problem. I exported my animated character as FBX for unity but had followed a tutorial which just fixed the bone rotation inside the IK menu (pole angle). So in unity my animations where freaking out and I invested hours to find why that was... Now I re-rigged my legs with proper bone rotations (while trying to fix the problems I kinda screwed my first rig up) and will be redoing the animations. Such a clean nice explained video! Love it when people don't just show what to do but actually give reasons.
I didn't know SHOUT OUTS were part of the deal!!! This is an insane tutorial! I have never seen anyone do anything like this! Never mind the fact that you're still the only person to date I've ever seen fix the pole/bone roll issue! Can't wait to swing by the ol' Patreon!
Thanks for making this video, I have a complex "dog-leg" or digitigrade bone structure in my model, and this fixed a lot of my issues. 10/10 would recommend
@@LevelPixelLevel I know. I'm already experienced in drivers and constraints, but always looking for alternative solutions. So I'm very happy to see experienced users sharing their knowledge, like I do it too. Check my channel, if you like. So again: thanks!
This is actually a very nice and clean way of setting up a dynamic pole target! All other methods I know of involve some sort of dependency hack and they always break.
On a second thought, the thing that bothers me with this particular setup is that the knee twists half as much as the foot's Z rotation. The way I solved it is by adding a Copy Rotation constraint before the Damped Track on the pole target's parent, midway bone.
@@TheJobCompany For sure! You can keep adding to this set up with more constraints. Then you can add dials to these constraints with drivers to either lock the knee to the foot rotation, or the hips.
Whenever I try to mirror the pose the knees become flipped until I move something and than it just shifts back to normal. Anyone else dealing with something like that, and if so is there a fix for it?
I swear there isn't a single place on the internet that teaches you how to do hip bones like you have. It seems super helpful and neat, is it done in the same way you create the heel IK? Also this video helped me out immensely, the axes were doing me head in. Luckily I only had to parent them for my rig but will defo come back to this if I need to do the more advance method!
Thank you :) Glad you liked it. Usually, for a heel, I'll do a single chain IK, or a track to constraint depends on the level of detail needed on the project.
Thank you for this tutorial - it solved my problems and I now understand the concepts better. One possible future video could be the arm and shoulder (or would this be similar to the leg?)
Thank you! Yeah, I use this same set up on an arm. The main difference becomes the control points. The control points on the wrist and a shoulder are very different from a hip to a foot. But the elbow and the knee should react the same. I'll be posting more about arms in the future!
Really helpful video, thank you very much, but my god, it really feels like blender should give you a simple option to do this automatically when setting up the IK. Like how is THIS the best solution?
Hi there! I'm having trouble correcting my pole target. I enabled axes and pointed the X axis at the knee target, but when I position the foot, the leg bows out to the side incorrectly. Adjusting the Pole Angle is twisting my mesh.
Double-check that the pole target or the foot is not a child or parent of each other. Check my example file to confirm. Also, you may want to confirm you set the iterations on the IK solver, if you leave this at the default there will be grave consequences. docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/constraints/tracking/ik_solver.html
Level Pixel Level hey! I ended up figuring it out. I had to give the knee a bit more of a pre-bend in the right direction and that seemed to do the trick. Pole angles ended up being ok
Made a similar rig for the arm. It seems to have worked out well, but I doubt it. It will be great to see your lesson about creating a hand rig one day. (Sorry for google translate)
Nice video! There's not enough in depth stuff like this. I always have a problem with my elbow and knee joints where they'll bend at a weird axis unless I have the joints absolutely straight with a slight bend in them. Is it possible to specify manually what axis to bend on?
Hey, I do not know how to adjust the IK to change the axis, but you can parent other bones to the IK bones that have a different role axis and use these as your deform or your control bones. Thank you for the wonderful comments :)
Great lesson, thanks! Just wonder - why do you use additional bones for "inbetweening" pole target's ("green") parent bone, instead of using the "reds" ones? They have the same position. "Damped track" for it works the same way. Or it's all about rotation inheritance?..
Agreed - you can use a copy location for this, but I want the rotation from the hip and the ankle to also push the pole vector. The reason they are all pointing in the same direction is to keep the copy transforms static in the default location.
Here is the Intro to IK video: ua-cam.com/video/LYqsEEgan7s/v-deo.html&ab_channel=LevelPixelLevel Here is a longer series where I cover Robot Rigging and I add IK legs: ua-cam.com/play/PLbjn7kaP877v6ByHd-fgek3kOmUYFOzR0.html Here is a Game Character Rigging series where I also cover an IK setup: ua-cam.com/play/PLbjn7kaP877tIyvo7zxExzSJQTDStwOjU.html
im trying to ik my leg. i put my knee target and leg control behind the foot but after use IK and chosing the right options if i try to move the leg goes crazy and goes spining out of control and the same happens with arm ik they go spining away everytime i try to ik them
That might mean you have a dependency: ua-cam.com/video/NDlO48ai9FU/v-deo.html You might have to unparent the foot bone from the leg bone prior to making the IK constraints.
Nice video, but I have an issue Whenever I set the pole of the armature, my ik doesn't work, I mean the bones become stiff and they only translate, but thry do not behave how IK should, pls help me
Interesting -- I wonder why it uses X axis to aim to ward the pole. Seems like it would make more sense to use Z. Is changing the pole target angle to 90 degrees any different from rolling the bones 90 degrees? I generally try to set my bones up so Y is forward, X is the axis of rotation, an Z is "up" (like the top of the knee), as that makes the most sense to me. I just adjust the pole target angle to compensate but I wonder if the behavior is any different doing it your way. It's usually fine for legs, but I tried to IK fingers last night, and they wanted to bend at weird angles, so I ended up scrapping the pole target and enabling the use of location AND rotation on the IK target bone.
Hey, yeah, totally agree, it seems like there should be another dial in the constraint, like, 'choose your pole target axis' so you can flip it to use the y axis if you want. I don't think it is a bad thing to use the y axis and add a rotation to the pole vector if it works for your rig. The main thing is to know why that dial acts the way it does. The main key is if you want to use the role value during the animation. If you need to go to -90 or 90 off the bat it will limit how much you can use this dial down the road. But this really depends on the scope of the project and the show.
@@LevelPixelLevel Ah, I never thought of animating that value. I just animate the pole targets themselves if I need to. Setting that to 90 degrees would effectively be the same as a "use z as pole target axis" option, though, right?
When I move the bone behind the foot around to test if the pole target is working, the leg will stay straight and just rotate when I move it. Is there any fix for that? P.S. I use Blender 2.90 if that helps.
Only thing I didn't care for was the constant repetition of key binds. Say the operations you are doing, perhaps show the key binds as annotations. Thanks for the tutorial.
I've heard this might just be a Blender problem, but whenever I try to Alt+R or Alt+G to return everything to default pose, I have to mash it over and over to actually get everything back to exactly where it should be. Did I mess up, or are the rumors true that Blender's got bugs? :P
This sounds like you have a cyclical dependency in the file. Meaning the foot control might be parented to the ik leg bone. Try the example file, and review the outliner to ensure this is not parented.
![[#3] Foot rigging in Blender using IK constraints](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aAE_Az_51sk/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks a ton man! This solved so many of those weird leg flipping issues that normal tutorials have.
Thanks for the concise turtorial...It can be overwhelming for begniners, but this video helped me step my rig.
This video reviews one method for controlling the Pole Target in an IK Setup, there are other methods and workflows, but I prefer this one. It is actually a technique I learned in Maya shhh don't tell anyone :)
Thanks, just the little information about where the IK is targeting the pole (x axis) was crucial to fix my problem. I exported my animated character as FBX for unity but had followed a tutorial which just fixed the bone rotation inside the IK menu (pole angle). So in unity my animations where freaking out and I invested hours to find why that was... Now I re-rigged my legs with proper bone rotations (while trying to fix the problems I kinda screwed my first rig up) and will be redoing the animations. Such a clean nice explained video! Love it when people don't just show what to do but actually give reasons.
This is the only guide that truly helped me set up my rig the way I needed. Huge thanks!
Congrats! You're the best! ⭐3 years from now, and this is still one unique, godly tutorial on this complicated, yet intriguing subject.
So it still hits huh. Ight imma use it
I didn't know SHOUT OUTS were part of the deal!!! This is an insane tutorial! I have never seen anyone do anything like this! Never mind the fact that you're still the only person to date I've ever seen fix the pole/bone roll issue! Can't wait to swing by the ol' Patreon!
Thank you :) The Patreon video shows how I built this leg at the beginning of the file and has those source Blender files as well.
genius pole follow mechanism cause of simplicity. Thanks for sharing
woov, this method is so impressive
Can confirm this still helps to this day :D Thanks man.
Hey, this still works today, the concepts are the same. This same theory works in Maya and Unreal as well.
Thanks for making this video, I have a complex "dog-leg" or digitigrade bone structure in my model, and this fixed a lot of my issues. 10/10 would recommend
Thank you so much for sharing this with the community. This helps me personally to make my own rigs more intuitive.
Right on! Glad that is helped you! You can keep adding to this system with additional constraints and drivers for more functionality!
@@LevelPixelLevel I know. I'm already experienced in drivers and constraints, but always looking for alternative solutions. So I'm very happy to see experienced users sharing their knowledge, like I do it too. Check my channel, if you like. So again: thanks!
Ah this video saved a heck lot of animation time, thanks
This is actually a very nice and clean way of setting up a dynamic pole target! All other methods I know of involve some sort of dependency hack and they always break.
Yeah! I've tried some other methods and I always come back to this one. You can keep adding to this as well with additional constraints and drivers!
On a second thought, the thing that bothers me with this particular setup is that the knee twists half as much as the foot's Z rotation. The way I solved it is by adding a Copy Rotation constraint before the Damped Track on the pole target's parent, midway bone.
@@TheJobCompany For sure! You can keep adding to this set up with more constraints. Then you can add dials to these constraints with drivers to either lock the knee to the foot rotation, or the hips.
Damn that's clean 👌
I love that you include the follow along files, it helps so much! Very professional and very n i c e
Thank you :) glad you liked it!
You are a Legend!! You saved my whole day trying to solve the flipping problem man!
simple and to the point - thanks man!
I'm so glad I discovered this channel!
Whenever I try to mirror the pose the knees become flipped until I move something and than it just shifts back to normal. Anyone else dealing with something like that, and if so is there a fix for it?
I swear there isn't a single place on the internet that teaches you how to do hip bones like you have. It seems super helpful and neat, is it done in the same way you create the heel IK? Also this video helped me out immensely, the axes were doing me head in. Luckily I only had to parent them for my rig but will defo come back to this if I need to do the more advance method!
Thank you :) Glad you liked it. Usually, for a heel, I'll do a single chain IK, or a track to constraint depends on the level of detail needed on the project.
Very clear and clean! Thank you for the video - keep up the great vids!
VERY smart setup! Exactly what I needed :D
Thanks a lot! The best tutorial!
Heck yeahhhh game changer. You rock!
Thank you for this tutorial - it solved my problems and I now understand the concepts better. One possible future video could be the arm and shoulder (or would this be similar to the leg?)
Thank you! Yeah, I use this same set up on an arm. The main difference becomes the control points. The control points on the wrist and a shoulder are very different from a hip to a foot. But the elbow and the knee should react the same. I'll be posting more about arms in the future!
This is 🥇, thanks a lot is a fantastic way to fix the pole clipping. Thanks a lot.
Very nice tutorial.
Really helpful video, thank you very much, but my god, it really feels like blender should give you a simple option to do this automatically when setting up the IK. Like how is THIS the best solution?
Ooooh what a legend ! ! !
Brilliant! Thanks!
Super! Thank you.
thanks bro.. appreciate this video a lot
Thank you! Glad you liked it :)
Thank you for this tutorial, this is the best one I've seen so far! can this be also apply to arm?
Hi there! I'm having trouble correcting my pole target. I enabled axes and pointed the X axis at the knee target, but when I position the foot, the leg bows out to the side incorrectly. Adjusting the Pole Angle is twisting my mesh.
Double-check that the pole target or the foot is not a child or parent of each other. Check my example file to confirm.
Also, you may want to confirm you set the iterations on the IK solver, if you leave this at the default there will be grave consequences. docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/constraints/tracking/ik_solver.html
Level Pixel Level hey! I ended up figuring it out. I had to give the knee a bit more of a pre-bend in the right direction and that seemed to do the trick. Pole angles ended up being ok
@@NickCheng93 Right! Glad that worked out!
@@NickCheng93 absolutely, it's a weird quirk but the knee has to be bent a little bit in order for it to work.
Made a similar rig for the arm. It seems to have worked out well, but I doubt it. It will be great to see your lesson about creating a hand rig one day. (Sorry for google translate)
Hand rig might come when I do a full human rig, I'm getting there :) now it is about finding the time, but soon I hope to have something up!
Nice video! There's not enough in depth stuff like this. I always have a problem with my elbow and knee joints where they'll bend at a weird axis unless I have the joints absolutely straight with a slight bend in them. Is it possible to specify manually what axis to bend on?
Hey, I do not know how to adjust the IK to change the axis, but you can parent other bones to the IK bones that have a different role axis and use these as your deform or your control bones. Thank you for the wonderful comments :)
Great lesson, thanks!
Just wonder - why do you use additional bones for "inbetweening" pole target's ("green") parent bone, instead of using the "reds" ones? They have the same position. "Damped track" for it works the same way.
Or it's all about rotation inheritance?..
Agreed - you can use a copy location for this, but I want the rotation from the hip and the ankle to also push the pole vector.
The reason they are all pointing in the same direction is to keep the copy transforms static in the default location.
I didn't think it could be that complex
I simply use Transformation Constraint for that issue. Turn the leg ik target 's y axis movement to the pole target's z movement.
can you provide the link of the video that you did the rigging of inverse kinematics (i.e. the rig which was there in the begining of the scene)
Here is the Intro to IK video: ua-cam.com/video/LYqsEEgan7s/v-deo.html&ab_channel=LevelPixelLevel
Here is a longer series where I cover Robot Rigging and I add IK legs: ua-cam.com/play/PLbjn7kaP877v6ByHd-fgek3kOmUYFOzR0.html
Here is a Game Character Rigging series where I also cover an IK setup: ua-cam.com/play/PLbjn7kaP877tIyvo7zxExzSJQTDStwOjU.html
@@LevelPixelLevel thanks
im trying to ik my leg. i put my knee target and leg control behind the foot but after use IK and chosing the right options if i try to move the leg goes crazy and goes spining out of control and the same happens with arm ik they go spining away everytime i try to ik them
That might mean you have a dependency: ua-cam.com/video/NDlO48ai9FU/v-deo.html
You might have to unparent the foot bone from the leg bone prior to making the IK constraints.
@@LevelPixelLevel i figure it out eventualy by my self, i didnt notice it was parented ups
Thank you cX
Maybe I'm missing something but my implementation of this led to a parenting chain where if I wanted to reset my IK, it wouldn't reset fully
Nice video, but I have an issue
Whenever I set the pole of the armature, my ik doesn't work, I mean the bones become stiff and they only translate, but thry do not behave how IK should, pls help me
Make sure your chain length is set on your rigs. blender.stackexchange.com/questions/106685/how-to-change-chain-lenght-in-inverse-kinematics
Please make a video on full human and face rigg please please please
Working my way there! If I do this is will be a long series with long videos, I want to get a bunch of basic concepts out of the way first.
@@LevelPixelLevel no problem if the video is long I like your teaching skills
genius!
Interesting -- I wonder why it uses X axis to aim to ward the pole. Seems like it would make more sense to use Z. Is changing the pole target angle to 90 degrees any different from rolling the bones 90 degrees? I generally try to set my bones up so Y is forward, X is the axis of rotation, an Z is "up" (like the top of the knee), as that makes the most sense to me. I just adjust the pole target angle to compensate but I wonder if the behavior is any different doing it your way. It's usually fine for legs, but I tried to IK fingers last night, and they wanted to bend at weird angles, so I ended up scrapping the pole target and enabling the use of location AND rotation on the IK target bone.
Hey, yeah, totally agree, it seems like there should be another dial in the constraint, like, 'choose your pole target axis' so you can flip it to use the y axis if you want.
I don't think it is a bad thing to use the y axis and add a rotation to the pole vector if it works for your rig. The main thing is to know why that dial acts the way it does.
The main key is if you want to use the role value during the animation. If you need to go to -90 or 90 off the bat it will limit how much you can use this dial down the road. But this really depends on the scope of the project and the show.
@@LevelPixelLevel Ah, I never thought of animating that value. I just animate the pole targets themselves if I need to. Setting that to 90 degrees would effectively be the same as a "use z as pole target axis" option, though, right?
@@jitspoe Yeah, pretty much, and it is also helpful if you ever have an arm or a leg that is not straight down one axis.
When I move the bone behind the foot around to test if the pole target is working, the leg will stay straight and just rotate when I move it. Is there any fix for that? P.S. I use Blender 2.90 if that helps.
the arrows to move bone constraints up and down the stack is missing.
+1 subscription
Only thing I didn't care for was the constant repetition of key binds. Say the operations you are doing, perhaps show the key binds as annotations. Thanks for the tutorial.
I'll give it a shot, I think I'll also start stating if it is a beginner or advanced tutorial.
good!
is there a reliable way of making this work on the arms too? 😳
I've heard this might just be a Blender problem, but whenever I try to Alt+R or Alt+G to return everything to default pose, I have to mash it over and over to actually get everything back to exactly where it should be. Did I mess up, or are the rumors true that Blender's got bugs? :P
This sounds like you have a cyclical dependency in the file. Meaning the foot control might be parented to the ik leg bone. Try the example file, and review the outliner to ensure this is not parented.
To solve the problem of the foot far from the leg, can see this video ua-cam.com/video/Pt3-mHBCoQk/v-deo.html
In 2.82 you can already use "Limit Distance" constraint for this purpose )
Rigging will literally never make sense.
Character work is for the birds lmao pls remind me to never do this again xD