2009

Animating the lamp with applied IK
The illustration demonstrates how an applied IK animation works. Just as in
the example in Animating with Interactive IK on page 3459, 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 the
lamp head as a child. The spider moves in a 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 with the box and calculates 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.
3464 | Chapter 15 Animation