Help: OpenMaya, Realtime Formulas, & Custom Inverse Kinematics

[Anonymous]

Hey guys!

I'm currently taking a computer graphics course and I was hoping someone might be able to help solve a problem I've been having. The course is about understanding algorithms, implementing them, and improving them, if possible. I am new to Maya, but not new to programming.

I'm attempting to implement my own version of inverse kinematics. I have a working formula implemented in Java. I recently came upon OpenMaya as a way of accessing the joints of the project. I understand that I can manipulate objects at the moment I run a function. However, ideally, for inverse kinematics, I'd like to be able to attach a formula to the start and end nodes of a joint chain. In this way, every time the end joint is moved in the editor, the other joints in the chain are moved appropriately in real time in the editor so an artist can see this (just like the built in I.K.). Is this possible with OpenMaya?

The other angle I approached this from was creating my own ikSolver through the Maya devkit. There is an example ik2BSolver in there, however I have been having problems getting it to compile (C++) so thought OpenMaya might be an easier solution.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and hope you're all having a lovely day! 🙂

-G