I am a student animator who is very new to full bipedal rigging. Yesterday I finished rigging my second full biped character (Spline, IK legs, IK/FK switching arms, and some extra clothing controls too).
Everything seemed to be working properly (much better than my first anyway) until i noticed a potential issues with both the arms and the fingers regarding the IK/FK switch I built into the clavicle control.
The problem is as follows:
The export arm moves in turn perfectly with whichever other skeleton is currently in control, IK or FK. However, the arm that is not in control does NOT follow along which is problematic if I need to switch from IK to FK or vise versa, as the export arm will immediately snap back to the last position the latter controller was left in. In the example below, the export arm (black) snaps back down to the FK arm (purple) after the IK arm (green) guided it upwards.
If I were to now guide the export arm with the FK arm, and then switch back to IK after a few frames, it would again snap back to the IK arm's previous location.
My IK/FK switch is an enum attribute that controls the weighting that each of the two parent-constrained arms have over the export arm through a set driven key. The SDK also controls the visibility of the IK and FK's control curves respectively. The controls also do not update their location when the switch is flipped.
Another issue with the IK/FK switch is the fingers. The fingers do not move with the arm, even when the skeleton is parented to the arm.
I could solve this issue by placing the finger controls under the hand control in the hierarchy, but i could only do that for one of the hand controls, IK or FK. If I placed the controls under the FK hand control curve, but then moved the IK arm, it would result in the same error as pictured above. I need the finger controls to follow the export arm so it wont matter whether or not I have the IK or FK arm in control. However I have no controls on the export arm to place them under.
Is it feasible to place the hand control curves under the hierarchy of the export arm's actual bones??
I remember the last biped I rigged had these same issues and I got a C- on that assignment, and now I'm running into the same problems in the middle of a production sprint and I don't know how to fix it. Any advice is appreciated. Sorry if this was poorly explained, I'm just a beginner.
EDIT: here is my outliner:
