8

464 Chapter 12: Animation
of the World will prevent y ou from transforming
single objects in IK mode.
Animating with Applied IK
Select the end of a hierarchy > Hierarchy panel > IK > S et
object parameters such as Bind to Follow Object > Apply
IK.
Ap plied IK requires you bind one or more parts
of your IK structure to animated follow objects.
Once bound, you can select any object in your
kinemat ic chain and click Apply IK. This calculates
theIKsolutionforeachframeoftheanimation
and places transform keys for every object in the
IK chain.
The A pply IK method of animation works best
when you want objects in the kinematic chain to
match the motions of other objects exactly.
Tip: Applied IK is a feature carried over from the
earliest version of the software. It is recommended
that you explore the IK Solver m ethods first, and
only use Applied IK if you find the IK Solvers won’t
satisfy your needs.
Ex a mpl e of Appl ied I K
IK structure
Animating the lamp with applied IK
The illustration demonstrates how an applied
IK animation works. Just as in the example in
Animating w ith Interac t ive IK (page 2–462) ,the
figure shows an IK lamp structure with its head
positioned over a spider. To maintain the offset
distance between the lamp head and spider, the
actual end effector is an invisible Dummy helper
object, placed within the spider and linked to
thelampheadasachild. Thespidermovesina
straight line over 100 frames.
To bind the end effector to the spider, click Bind,
and then drag a line between the two. Once the
end effector is bound to the spider, it will try to
match the location of its pivot point with the pivot
point of the spider.
Select the end effector and click Apply IK. The
software matches the end effector w ith the box
and ca lculates the IK solution for every frame.
Playback of the animation shows that the end
effector perfectly follows the box.
Note: In the above example, the end effector is
an invisible Dummy helper object, which is used
to maintain the offset distance between the lamp
head and the spider.