IK issue- need a hand fixing my hand fixing problem!
marcussrjbates_b1589f87c6
Posts: 36
Hiya! Hoping someone out there can help me with this...am trying to create a series of poses in which the right hand of Genesis 3 figure remains static (the figure is standing with this hand resting on the mantle above a fireplace). I'm fairly new to Daz though with several years experience with Poser, so I'm fairly certain how this is achieved...applying IK to the right hand of this figure and I should be able to rotate/translate any bones in the figure and the right hand will do it's best to remain locked in position.
Daz seems a little more...."advanced" in it's IK functions, so as I don't want the hand sliding about in it's rotation any more than it's position, I've applied "Pin Rotation" and "Pin Translation" to the right hand of Genesis 3...in Poser this would result in a fairly robust lock. Sure, there'd be some wobbling of the hand between poses, but (in Poser) Vicky would sooner dislocate her elbow and shoulder joints than move that hand.
I'm not seeing the same effect in Daz. My Genesis 3 figure seems to be making no effort whatsoever to keep her hand on that mantle! Any bone from hip to forearm is pulling the hand off the mantle with no visible resistance and most telling the arm position from collar to hand is remaining constant...the arm is showing no attempt to straighten, twist or bend in an effort to maintain the hands position. What I am getting is a dotted purple line marking the extent of IK's (and my own) failure.
The wierdest part for me is IK applied to the same figures feet is working absolutely beautifully! I can push Genesis 3 from a full stretch to a low squat with perfect position locking and realistic bending occuring between the hip-thigh-shin-ankle areas (much better than Poser tbh...hugely reduced wobbling and it doesn't have Posers tendency to push the limb into unrealistic, painful looking bends).
Can anyone help/explain why I'm having this issue? Is it a bug? Have I somehow got different settings for IK in the hands and feet? Does Genesis 3 just suffer from "wandering hand syndrome"? Any thoughts or tips greatly appreciated! 
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Comments
The pinning in DS is far from perfect unfortunately
. I haven't worked with G3 but with G1 pinning works fairly well. You could also try the Active Pose tool, it won't let you pin rotation only but it is far more robust, you can choose to pin both starting and ending points of the bones which gives the best pinning.
Pin only translation, the wrist needs to be able to bend to adjust to the new positions.
Ah...I did think of this myself...it has zero effect unfortunately. The hand is still fully responsive to any translations/rotations applied to parent bones, and the arm is still remaining rigidly locked in it's original pose (ie. not flexing/straightening to maintain the IK'd elements position).
I've seen this mentioned in another thread on a related topic...I'll admit I'm a little confused as to the functionality of the Active Pose tool...I've tried using it following your suggestion...selecting the right hand, Toggle Pins (red pin appears on hand), select "pin at both" (as suggested), select (for eg.) Lower Abdomen, adjust lower abs pose...I'm now getting a limited IK function...in that it appears that the Forearm bone is now reacting to the changes, but no others! The abdomen, chest, collar and shoulder bones are all remaining fixed in a rigid pose and the hand is being dragged as soon as the forearms limits are reached (certainly an improvement, but given how even a tiny movement in the abdomen/chect area can create a massive shift in forearm position, it's limiting my IK to fractions of degrees...)
Presumably this isn't occuring for you and this method affects the shoulder/collar/chest areas as you manipulate the figure? Do you have any suggestion as to why mine isn't responding correctly (as mentioned, not absolutely sure of what the Active Pose is, or what it's settings do...)
FYI still getting absolutely superb results from IK on the feet...couldn't ask for better tbh...it's like she's wearin' magnetic booties! But I don't understand how the feet respond so well to the IK and the hands just won't play...I wonder if it's an alignment issue...? With the foot bone being at right angles to the shin as opposed to the wrists parallel alignment to the forearm? Or am I bugged? I've been on YouTube and seen the promo vid of DAZ's IK launch for Daz Studio 4.0, so I know how it's supposed to function...I just wish mine was doing the same!
(in the meantime I'll have a play around with Active Poses settings, see if I can achieve greatness through random tinkering!)
With the Active Pose tool selected you can try pinning her hand and all the fingerbones to get a more stable pinning, also pin her feet and try dragging the right collar or the chest or neck allowing the hip bone to move to get a more natural pose. Trial and error:) You can also select a bone and adjust the stiffness for that bone, increasing stiffness will make the selected bone less willing to move when you drag another bone.
But I have to admit I don't understand why the universal tool pinning is not working for you. Could it be the pose is a little extreme and you need to set rotation limits off?
I was concerned about the pose putting a strain on the IK so I created a new scene with a bog standard G3 female figure, gave it a nice relaxed pose (arms relaxed at her sides, slightly bent and away from the body) which should give the IK a fair margin for error before it "breaks"...but I'm getting zero response from the IK pins (the wrist is rotating a little, as though it's attempting to work, but it's making no impact on the hands position whatsoever...it just keeps blithely following the parent bones every move).
Thanks for further tip on Active Pose...I'd had a similar idea in alternately pinning the bottom of each thigh bone whilst dragging the hip backwards and forwards which effectively twisted the hip around (i'm a fast learner!) and then used my fully functioning IK feet to tidy up...but this is not a technique I'd ideally like to use for animating!
Anyway, my blank, bland-as-can-be, vanilla flavoured IK pose test has left me a little depressed (I was kinda hoping it WAS the pose, tbh...I could work around that) but taking of the rotation limits might help...I'm not sure how to do this tbh...is there an overall function for turning them all off, or for a whole figure? ATM I'm only aware of how to do this parameter by parameter, body part by body part, via the individual "Parameter Settings". Also, do you know if the "bone stiffness" setting affects the universal pinning tool, or just the pins applied in Active Pose?
One final question (yes, I'm a pest I know)...there doesn't seem to be any "memory" to Daz's IK...what I mean is in Poser two things happen with the IK...firstly, if I bend the hip away so it "breaks" the IK, the IK position is still stored...I can then bend say, the abdomen in the opposite direction and the IK will attempt to reset the position of the hand to the original position before the hip bend broke the IK. In Poser this function is permanent. I can drag any bones I choose, but unless I actively move the XYZ co-ordinates of the hand itself, the IK position will want to remain exactly where originally set...even if a new pose is loaded (in a new frame, ofc!), I could simply delete the new parameter settings for that new pose in relation to the hand and the hand would immediately attempt to snap back to those original IK co-ordinates.
Now, I can't find anything similar to that functionality in DAZ yet...when the IK breaks, the purple lines appear, but then disappear as soon as the current translation is ended...and I cannot find anywhere to view/alter the XYZ co-ordinates of the hand directly...effectively the "breadcrumb trail" I would use in Poser to lead me back from a broken IK pose to a compromise fixed pose appears to be missing...?
Thanks for your help so far! I've learnt some new stuff already...in some ways I'd be better of as a total newbie, rather than an experienced Poser user lost in a strangely familiar but utterly alien world (a lot like every other episode of the original Star Trek!) It clouds my judgement a lot...everything is either "ooh! that's way better than Poser!" or "Grrr...in Poser I could just...." (mostly the former I'm pleased to say)...
That is really strange, try G2 or G1? Could it be a bug with G3?
Lol I know what you mean. It takes a bit of experimenting with pinning/dragging but eventually it will do what you want it to do
Select all the bones you want to unlimit in the scene tab, go to edit/Figure/limits and choose limits off.
No does not affect the universa tool IK.
The active pose tool IK is saved with the file but not universal tool IK. But that depends on the base figure, I think the Gen 4 figures keep the universal tool pinning with the saved file.
No problem;) You'll find a way I'm sure!
Good question...there are some issues with Genesis 3's set up and tools like PowerPose due to it's new bones...but...no...
I'm getting the same issue with Genesis 2 figures...if anything it's even more obvious that only the forearm is actively trying to maintain the IK positioning...I'm pretty sure that's NOT what's meant to be happening! (I think I may have a techy-boo-boo, to use the technical term!)
Dang...my immediate next question of "Why not???" is presumably not one you are in a position to answer!
In a word...dingdangdiddlypoopers! (I apologise for my use of strong language).
I'm noticing some extremely unusual IK results tbh...I'm bending Genesis 2's Abdomen towards the IK point I've set...and the arm is bending inwards and moving AWAY from the IK point...it SHOULD be compressing towards it and eventually breaking and pushing the hand through the IK point (didn't notice this on G3 just G2)...
I'll do some testing when my rendering session is done, but this is odd, it should really just work
Meanwhile let's hope some other good forum member has mercy on our soul and come up with a solution or workaround!
You could maybe give us a screenshot of what you're trying to do?
@ marcussrjbates_b1589f87c6
The DazStudio IK-System is far from beeing much of use and as far as I can tell there havend been any improvments over the years - we can just hope that it will maybe get better once they evantualy release DazStudio 5 some day.
As a workaround for the weakness of the IK-System you can try out these scripts from Mcasual. They are not that interactive like the IK-solver with pinning while using the universal tool or the active pose tool - but they will do the job. You have to give them a selected figure and Null Objects as targets and run the script that calculates the keyframes on the timeline range.
mcjAutoLimb2015 to let a limb reach a target point
mcjHoldOn to let a limb follow a target point and keep orientation
I'm not sure any of the other Forum members are going to do any better than you have tbh...hey, don't let it go to your head! You've been great, very helpful and you've given me some new ideas to play with...but as you just said, it really should "just work"...that's kinda the whole point of using IK!
I was hoping there was some setting I'd overlooked, some simple "doh!" moment...now I'm just hoping it's a reasonably common error and the techies will know what to do...but it seems it must be a bug...I can't have fully functional IK on the feet and IK on the hands working just to the elbows...so I've logged this as a fault with the Helpdesk (maybe it'll just disappear as an issue when I eventually move up to version 4.10 (I only downloaded DAZ in last few months, and was kinda surprised to find I'm already running "old" software)!
I seriously appreciate your time. Thank you. I can be a wordy git...if the situation was reversed, could I even be bothered to read one of my own posts? Probably not!
Be curious to hear from anyone else who's had similar partial IK functionality issues...(I certainly don't want to be the only one!)
(as to screenshot...I've gone right back to basics...I'm just playing around with a blank Gen 3 figure trying to figure out how I can work with current situation...it's put a real crimp in my plans tbh...almost tempted to dump DAZ in the trash n run screaming back to Poser...but I've invested too much in Genesis 3 and DAZ only content in last few months to give up just yet...sigh...I envy you the whole "rendering session" thing...ain't had one of those since the switch!)
- select the figure in the scene pane (root node / body) gets selected
- right-click the figure in the scene pane and choose Select Children - all children nodes / bones gets selected in the hirarchy (maybe fitted things and parented props too)
- OR select maybe Left + Right Collar Bone and right-click Select Children - to just set off the rotation limits of these
- go to Main Menu: Edit>Figure>Limits>Limits Off (Rotation)
Thank you all for comments! I've got the Active Pose mastered now (in the same way as banging two rocks together means I've mastered the art of precussion...) and I'm OK with the Limits On/Off function...though atm it is of scant help...I'm getting zero response in IK from anything above the elbow on any pose, on any figure from Genesis upwards...I'm usually quick to blame myself in these situations (not out of self loathing, you understand, but my conjenital laziness...I'm usually the easiest person for me to find) but I can't see how this one's user error.
Thank you Syrus Dante for the scripts...I've seen a video tutorial on using Null Objects to control directional movement in figure parts and did wonder if there might be a solution there...didn't know you could use it for a positional lock as well...presumably this would also give me the XYZ movement and to an extent the "breadcrumbs" I'm used to in Poser, as I could move the Null Object as required...it does seem a sizable effort to achieve something I'd consider "basic functionality"...
I'm not sure I'd consider the IK in DAZ poor though...as stated above, the IK I'm getting on the feet is a vast improvement on what I've been used to in Poser (or perhaps Genesis 3 is just that much more flexible than V4-5...? Either way, I'm pretty used to Posers IK traits...elbow pops and pulsating wrist compressions and the horrible inevitablity that switching the IK on/off is a certainty to nudge your pose out of position, loading a pose is going to nudge your poses elsewhere in your timeline out of position...accidentally shifting your wieght from one buttock to the other or coughing too loudly...is going to nudge your pose out of position.
Nope...I'm fairly certain the IK in DAZ is better...and easy to use...it's just I'd like it to work on hands as well as feet!
At the moment...whilst I wait for Tech Support I'm trying to reverse engineer the whole process...thanks to Sven Dullah's tips on Active Pose...essentially I'm creating the new pose as I see fit, using IK on the feet as required, but largely ignoring the arms exact position in favour of general position and a correctly posed upper torso, then using Active Pose to pin the upper torso to the collar and then dragging the rest of the arm into position manually...first attempt took a little longer than similar IK work done in Poser (OK, OK...about 3x longer...) and the final hand position is a series of tricky tweaks to get a position match...but seriously, when was posing hands ever easy...? You show me someone who claims "posing hands is easy for me!" and I'll happily demonstrate a few familiar one and two finger poses just for them!
I'm very glad you found a workaround for your problem, but I still don't get it. I use Genesis1 every day, that's my main base figure for both stills and animation. I use both kinds of pinning everyday and they always work as expected. Good you put a ticket in, let me know what they say, very curious
Oh btw, I think posing hands is pretty easy
And one more thing lol. If you have pinned something and then decide you want to set limits off you need to unpin and repin, otherwise it won't have any effect. Ok, done for now, carry on people nothing to see here!