A few days ago, someone asked how to parent body parts to enable a two-handed sword pose. Thanks to several responses, I learned about parenting body parts to objects and other body parts by turning on inverse kinematics. Unfortunately, when I do the parenting, the selected part (and others!) are badly deformed. The attached pic shows what happened when I tried to parent the left hand to the cylinder prop. I followed the instructions in the following post to the letter.

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2185157&Reply=2185269#5

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Mike

Try this, which worked for me... Load up your figure, load up your prop and parent to one hand. Pose as desired. Switch on IK for the unparented hand and it should move correctly with everything else.

Thanks Sam, but that is pretty much what I did, except that I posed the figure before and after loading the prop.

BTW, I also get a deformity if I follow this sequence:

1. Load figure and prop.
2. Pose prop to fit hand-1.
3. Pose hand-2.
4. Turn off IK for hand-2.
5. Parent hand-2 to hand-1.

This was also explained in the earlier thread, but when I execute step 5, both hand-2 and forearm-2 are deformed.

Mike

Forget the parenting in step 5. If you pose hand-2, then switch on IK for that hand, you should find it will follow the prop with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The thing to remember is that you don't need to parent the second hand. Just switch IK on for it and it will follow. Hope that's helped. If not, IM me but don't expect a response for a while; it's 4:30 AM here and time I hit the sack.

If you switch on IK the hand will follow nothing and will remain fixed in some point of the 3d universe, all body's part will move with exception of the hand (within the movement limits)

Sorry, but just turning on IK after following the other steps does not work (not sure how the hand would know to follow the prop without some association between them). I think I know what IK is supposed to do, but the problem is the deformations which occur when I do the parenting. It does not seem to affect other folks who have parented body parts after turning off IK, so I am very curious what it is that I am doing differently.

Mike

They're right, Sam. It won't work. But you will sometimes get deformities like that when you resize the parent object.

Damn, you're right. What the hell was I thinking of?