From the course: Rigging a Quadruped in Maya

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Creating an FK/IK tail

Creating an FK/IK tail - Maya Tutorial

From the course: Rigging a Quadruped in Maya

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Creating an FK/IK tail

- [Instructor] In this lesson we'll create some tail controls for our character. We could create FK controls just like we've done for the character's ears and head and snout area. And that would be a nice solution for a short tail like this. But what if the animator needed to pin this character's tail down? Maybe while the character is sitting the tail needs to lay in a specific orientation on the ground. Or maybe another character grabs this character's tail at some point during a sequence. So in those cases an IK set up like the one I've used for the back would probably be a better solution. 'Cause an IK spline solver allows for a more stationary pinning of the tip joints and also just generally gives the animator's a little bit more shaping control for those types of poses. But then the trade off, of course, would be that the animator would lose access to the overlap opportunities that are afforded with an FK setup or the natural sort of arcing behavior you get when rotation-based…

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