IK/FK state after importing a pose

[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

Here is what I get after importing a pose to an MHX armature with bone previously set to IK. The problem is not in the import but the after import, once to get the correct pose we need to switch from the IK mode to the FK mode to get it correctly. What the addon used to do automatically until a few commits back. So would be interesting to have this feature back.

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Or if possible an improvement that would be the addon to keep the previous state of the IK/FK for each limb before importing and restore it after the import. I'm not sure and it's hard to test now, but I believe that is the way the addon worked before version 1.4.2

I hope I made myself clear.

[Alessandro Padovani]

I believe the difference is that now mhx starts in ik mode, while previously it started in fk mode. As I understand it, to import a pose it is necessary to switch to fk first, then snap ik to fk before switching back to ik.

If I understand correctly, what you’re asking for is the import pose tool to automatically do ik-fk switching and snapping when needed. Otherwise the alternative is to work in fk mode to import daz poses and animations.

[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

Alessandro, in the current state of the addon, no matter if you previously set the bones to FK or IK before importing a pose, it will do it correctly. The point is that after importing if the armature was previously in FK, you will immediately see the correct pose. If it was set to IK, you just need to switch to FK to you will get the right pose and then you can start snapping to Ik again accord to your needs. Not a big problem, but it used to be automatic. And as it is now can be a little confusing, especially for less experienced users.

[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

It's easy to understand. Just aply a pose to an MHX with a total or partial IK bones set and you will see the result.

I believe Thomas will not have problems to understand the question. Lets wait to see how he will deal with it.

[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

"If I understand correctly, what you’re asking for is the import pose tool to automatically do ik-fk switching and snapping when needed. Otherwise the alternative is to work in fk mode to import daz poses and animations."

Yes, If before importing a pose I had legs set to IK and hand to FK, the addon inevitably would change all to FK during the import, so it get the correct pose. But after that, It should do the snapping to keep the legs as IK as before the importing. That would save a lot of time. Once the snapping operation for each limb is a time consumer, especially in scenes with a lot o models.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Please note the ik snapping may have some difference from the original fk pose, see #421. So to work accurately with daz poses and animations the pure fk approach is probably better.

[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

I'm aware of that Alessandro. And that is not relevant here. In fact that difference is mininal in most of the cases and do not cause impact at my workflow.

For what matters, if I'm not expressing myself clearly. If you can, just import a pose to an mhx armature with IK in the addon version 1.5 stable and with the addon 1.6 last commits. You will see the difference.

[Thomas Larsson]

Now the Load Pose tool and its siblings automatically changes all bones to FK, and turns the FK layers on and the IK layers off. So even if the rig starts out in IK, it ends up in FK after a pose is loaded, which I think makes sense.

The pose is not snapped to IK afterwards, this you have to do manually. The reason is that snapping only works for a single pose, not an action. There is (was) a tool for snapping an entire animation in the BVH retargeter addon, but it has not been updated for the new morph system (which forced mhx properties to be armature properties instead of object properties).

Eventually I want to separate the mhx runtime system (the mhx panels and some tools from the bvh retargeter) in a separate add-on, both to avoid double work and to reduce the code size for people not using mhx.

[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

Thomas, now it's all working fine unless you create the MHX using the Easy Import. In this case, you get no MHX controls at the sidebar and get this confusing armature rig(all rigs layers activated at the same time) as you see in the image below. And as far I tested the import poses don't work too.

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[Eder Rogerio Deana Juliette]

As for commit 72f0a19, all looks to work perfectly. I'll mark the issue as resolved. Thanks, Thomas.