Pose Editor with FK/IK Blending and Controllers

[Fox4445]

Hi. I have been using blendshapes to correct deformations on a skinned mesh, and have just discovered the Pose Editor. This seemed like a fantastic feature, especially as I was wondering how I might blend 3 or 4 blendshapes for the shoulder of my character. However, when using the Pose Editor I just get crash after crash after crash, and that is before I even get to edit the pose. My character rig is set up in the same way as the "Creating a Character Rig" series on the Maya Learning Channel. So I have IK and FK joint hierarchies driving a Result joint hierarchy, which drives the twist joints on the arms.

Because I have IK and FK controllers I have been expecting to get the "warning message appearing telling you that the joint is being controlled by other attributes" but this doesn't happen whether I try to add the Pose Interpolator to the Result Joint or the Twist Joint (the latter being the skinned joint for the arms). However, I did manage to get around this on one attempt by deleting the automatically created neutral poses, then adding the controller attributes from the outliner, then re-adding the neutral pose followed by creating a new pose. However, after editing a few polygons to test, and saving the pose by clicking the red edit button, then trying to switch between the neutral and edited poses.... yep, it crashed.

So I am wondering, perhaps someone can save me a whole lot of time by telling me whether or not the Pose Editor works with these FK/IK blended joint hierarchies, or is it, as I rather suspect, just for one or the other at a time?Secondly, if it does work, do I need to add the same pose for each of the IK and FK Controls? Or thirdly, if it doesn't work but can be 'hacked' by connecting a Pose Interpolator node in the node editor, can someone advise me or point me in the direction of a tutorial that explains how? (I've seen a couple of articles mentioning a Remap node with a Pose Interpolator node but I wouldn't know what to connect to what off the top of my head).

Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[Kahylan]

Hi!

I sadly can't tell you how to fix your problem, since I never had Maya crash on me repeatedly during this process. And I use it on IK/FK setups all the time.

However something I can tell you that I do differently, is that I don't connect my poses to controllers, but rather to joints.
As you realised, when you have an IK/FK system, you would have to create the same pose for both modes if you use the control orientations to drive your deformation, however when you use your Result joints (skinning joints,driven joints, depending on your naming conventions), the joints that are direcly connected to your mesh, you only have to set it up once, because these joints change position when you switch modes, so they should drive deformation correctly in every situation.

Maybe try if using joints instead of controls fixes your issue.

I hope it helps!

[Fox4445]

Thanks Kahylan for your quick reply and advice. I WAS trying to use the skinned joints but every tutorial that I have seen suggests that Maya would automatically detect that there was a controller connected to it and ask you to add the controller in the advanced settings for the interpolator. You got me wondering that perhaps Maya has been updated since the Pose Editor was introduced and perhaps it now handles this automatically. So I tried again and did actually set up a pose on my result joint, without adding the controllers, and saved it, but when I tried to switch to the neutral pose it crashed 🙂

In the meantime I have rigged three blendshapes for shoulder rotate forwards/upwards/backwards using condition nodes which seems to work fairly well but I expect the Pose Editor would blend better. If anyone else has any ideas it would be good to hear from you. Thanks.

[Fox4445]

Problem solved, I think - at least this has worked for me so far :-). As I mentioned before I was not getting the warning message to turn off adding the neutral poses when clicking "Create Pose Interpolator" in the Pose Editor. So even if I deleted the neutral poses, added my controller and added the neutral poses again, it was not recognising the neutral poses when I double clicked them. However, instead of using the Pose Editor, select your joint then go to the Deform menu and select "Pose Space Deformation > Create Pose Interpolator > Options". In the options window un-check "Add Neutral Poses" and click "Apply and Close". Now go to the Pose Editor where you can now select the pose interpolator you just created and add your controllers first, and then add the neutral poses from the Poses menu, and any new poses in the usual way. Now each pose should activate when double-clicked.

Actually, the next time you can go straight to the Pose Editor and click "Create Pose Interpolator" for your joint, and it will now create it without the neutral poses every time until you turn the option back on from the Deform menu.

Also, happy to report it does work with both my FK and IK controllers (as Kahylan said) but I only needed to add the FK controller; the IK one must get updated automatically - something good 🙂

Also I have to say I think the default weights seem to be wrong. If you only want deformations in one direction for a joint that rotates in many directions, eg. a shoulder, it gives you a percentage of that deformation even when you rotate in the other directions. And then after I had added deformations for the front, top and back of my shoulder joint it gave me all three of those deformations when I rotated the arm down - most annoying - and it took some time before I realised you have to adjust the weight(falloff) in the advanced settings for each pose. Oh, and for anyone new to the Pose Editor, turn off "Allow Negative Weights" - why does anyone want the top of the shoulder to collapse downwards when you rotate the arm down, just because you haven't set a pose for the downwards direction 🙂

Far fewer crashes now I have a better understanding. Hopefully this might help someone else 🙂

[Fox4445]

I have to report this is yet again no longer working! - The blendshape/pose is created but the neutral poses do not work, or double clicking a pose to go to it does not work! Perhaps it's because I have changed my shoulder rigging from a twist joint to a roll joint??? Ideas anyone????