Some people compare Blender to Maya or 3dsMax, pointing out the limitations of the free programs. Paid programs such as Maya or 3ds Max may support more sophisticated plug-ins or add-ons developed for commercial use, but Blender does not. But what they overlooked is that Blender's user base is incredibly large, and among them are many very talented and capable users just like you. Thanks for awesome video!
If just the rigging is easier than ARP I'll take it! I'm amazed with the granular level of detail you were able to pull out of the videos and turned to animation. That's a skill right there!
Amazing! IK/FK chain snapping alone is worth it. And you rock for supporting the power parity based on my location thing. I'll buy after I get pay next month.
Bro, great video, I'm just starting out with Blender and I wish you could update the last paragraph rigging part of the video to make it easier to apply like Auto rig pro, or at least have more tutorials for beginners to follow step by step, because it's still a bit difficult for me.
gonna buy this tomorrow. You cooked oh my lord I need this kinda stuff, especially since I am starting to animate more and could use every tool to help learn possible
I've just bought the add-on and I was wondering if you'd consider making a video of the rigging process from scratch for a human shaped character? I'm somewhat new to blender and I'm not sure how to apply it to the basic rig I have. I am going through the manual but, because of my limited knowledge, my progress is slow.
@@slephy Awesome! If there’s a high likelihood of you making that video in the next three months I could move onto other parts of my game while i wait for it to release. Is it something that you could see possibly happening in that time? I totally get you’re probably busy and there’s now way to know for sure but I thought I’d ask as I’m behind on other parts of the game that I could spend time on while waiting for your video. No worries if you can’t say anything just yet as well.
I have basically just started learning the animation side of blender but this looks like it makes managing the different rigs and doing full body animations like your examples soo much easier. Do you think this would be worth picking up for me as someone who barely knows what an FK and IK rig are in the first place?
Yeah, for context you might want to research IK/FK switching on youtube, there's some good general overviews out there. As soon as you start animating with the conventional systems or try to do anything fancy or particular with leg movement, you'll quickly discover why I built this
This is a really cool way of working- I've already got a character rigged with ARP that I'm committed to for this project, but I'm assuming since this is a control rig that sits on top of deform bones I should just be able to add it to any character that has bones? Cascadeur has an IK/FK workflow that is like this and it's super convenient, would love to have it in Blender as well.
It's a great tool that helps with *animation* part of the workflow. But I think it pales in comparison to ARP in terms of *rigging* part. ARP do a whole more things automatically for you. For example, automatic twist bones, bendy bones, fan bones, stretch parameter in N-panel, ropes IK, face rig, better symmetrize, and probably much more. It would be great if there was a way to make a whole rig with ARP, but animate with Kinematic Tool.
@@GAMERRAZUMNO yeah I didn't build the tool to compete with any of the more comprehensive rigging add-ons. I built it to solve a core problem that wastes time for nearly every animator. None of those other bells and whistles you listed matter to me if I'm wasting time on a core part of animating: editing a pose that deals with ik/fk.
Do you guy know any good Rigging tutorial that are both newbie and advanced for blender here ? (even if it not on blender, I'm fine with it if it teach general knowledge that can apply for any software here).
This looks very interesting! I'm currently learning to build my own advanced rig in Blender after being disappointed by what I got from rigify and ARP, this might be a great addition at the perfect time. One question about it, you say it works on any 3-bone chain which is great, but what if you have extra twist bones in your arms and legs, can it be adapted to work with that kind of setup?
@@setha.9867 yeah for any sort of tweak or twist bones, just build on top of the base 3 deformation bones by parenting to them. That way the system doesn't have anything between the arrangement, but you can still attach to it.
I'm currently watching this video, and it looks like genuine wizardry! Quick question though, does this include some sort of facial rigging capability? Like rigify's face rigs?
Nope, it's focused solely on speeding up the IK/FK workflow on limbs. My goal wasn't to compete with other more comprehensive rigging addons and instead focus on an area of animation that can improve 99% of animators lives.
I see at 2:20 you added timestamps. You should also add this to the description of the video. Make sure to add one at 0:00 so the chapter selector shows up.
is this a new rigging system or is it compatible with Auto Rig Pro or any rigify? I guess at the end animation can also be baked and just transfered to a different type of rig. But I'm wondering.
For exporting to Unreal, if you do as most game devs do and bake your actions to the deformation bones and export only your deformation bones, it should be alright, although I haven't tried it personally to Unreal, I've exported this way to Godot countless times. You'll probably need to troubleshoot scaling differences between Unreal and Blender, as is commonly the case. As far as Mixamo, I have no idea. If the amount and names of bones match from Mixamo onto the FK chain, it might work, but I really have no idea, I've never tried it before with Mixamo.
this looks amazing. does this work on animation exports for game engines like unity? i tried making my own fk/ik switch before but it was glitchy in-engine. UPDATE: It does work on Unity, I had a character rigged and animated. Thanks!
Consider that the grand majority of game devs never export any of the trick/mechanical/animation bones into engines, instead they just bake their animation actions onto the deformation bones as part of the export process and export only the deformation bones, then in engine, when an action or event occurs, the engine plays the animation. I'm not aware of any engines that have constraint settings that work 1-for-1 with Blender. I haven't exported to Unity, but I've exported to Godot countless times using the method I described. When exporting to Unity, if I understand correctly, there are some scaling differences between Unity and Blender, so you'll just have to troubleshoot that hurdle. I know Godot has some of its own in-engine IK systems but I have yet to really dive into that. Unity probably has its own little IK rig components as well. Cheers.
@@slephy I think the problem I had was I didn't automate baking/applying the keyframes after switching ik/fk drivers. But that got addressed on the first part of your video.
@@slephy You use Godot? Thats awesome. Can you make a video on how you used that method when exporting to Godot? Also subbed, always good to find another Godot/Blender content creator
I'll definitely have to get this when I have income again, the effective and efficient UX looks like an absolute game changer I am wondering, can the follow rotation system be used on the first bone of an assembly? This would be for the upper arm's fk getting it's rotation from the chest/rigcage instead of the shoulder. If not that's no biggie I could just add a modifier in the stack It is too bad assemblies can't overlap, switching from regular arm ik to forearm - upper arm - shoulder ik when a character places their arm on surface would be amazing with that kind of pivoting system
Oh I see what you're saying. So if I understand correctly, you're probably looking to do more of a pinning system, where the elbow/knee stays in place (although more specifically it sounds like you want to swing an arm in FK past a certain joint). If you're savvy you can probably find a work around. The system doesn't allow a bone to be part of more than one assembly, and the FK base already has its own follow-rotation, so you'll probably have to jury rig it in a wild way to get what you're looking for. Just try and add to the assembly by parenting to it, rather than inserting bones between the assembly, since inserting between will likely cause some undesired results. Toward the top of my list is a pinning setup for the knee/elbow since there are some sweeeeet animations I'm looking to do that really rely heavily on that functionality, and I don't want to leave it on the wayside.
@@slephy Sorry I wrote that confusingly, I was talking about two arm things: 1. Making it so the arm gets it's rotation from the ribcage instead of the shoulder while in fk mode to avoid having to counter-animate the shoulder's movement (which now that I think about it I could just swap out the target of the FK's follow rotation); 2. overlapping assemblies for robust elbow/forearm pinning It's good to hear you're looking to do knee/elbow pinning. Imo they require different implementations since a simple knee pin wouldn't work for the arm because the upper arm and shoulder demand ik where a thigh doesn't, which is why I was going on about what overlapping assemblies would be good for, when the elbow/forearm is planted the ideal behavior would be just like a leg (forearm = foot with adjustable pivot, upper arm = shin, shoulder = thigh, and a pole target would rotate the upper arm and shoulder). I can code pretty well so I may end up hacking it in at some point in the future in which case I'll just show you visually
@@within_the_sky2356 That would be cool to see a solution to what you're thinking. Personally, I'm not into the collarbone being part of the IK chain, and I enjoy having it as a separate bone that I control individually, since it really does have its own separate movements, and lifting or moving the arms up and back beyond a certain point is only possible via the scapula and the shoulder joint swinging around. I like to keep things as simple as possible :)
I started playing with the add on and it’s way easier than I expected. I do have one question though. My characters elbow is bending on the wrong local axis (z but I need x). Is there a way to fix that? She has an elbow pad so it looks really out of place while bent. And unrelated to the question, my original confusion was the starting point that my rig needed to be at before using your tool and if there was any specific set up it needed but a plain rig worked perfectly. I’m pretty new to blender so I only understood about half the documentation but that’s on me. I just looked up things I didn’t understand and it made following the instruction easier.
Also, the elbo can only rotate 180 degrees in fk, +/-90. Is there something o can do to enable another -70 degrees (the - direction is the natural bend. The + is broken elbow direction)?
With a bone selected in edit mode, ctrl+r allows you to twist the bone. The Kinematic Tool assembles the joint and bend depending on the direction the joint is pointing, no matter what axis you decide to bend on.
@@slephy Thank you! I've got one more question but first, that made a massive difference. So it's controlled by the "Roll" parameter by the look of it. For some reason it also fixed the forearm to have the 180 degree constraint like how you'd imagine. For my question, I'm doing anime style animations that tend to exaggerate range of motion/hyper extend joints in the animations but the elbow limit of 180 degrees prevents that. Is there a way for the user to edit that limit?
@@Hyruleearth In pose mode, select the FK middle bone and go to the constraints. There you'll find a Limit Rotation constraint. You can edit or remove it, but snapping (aka aligning) is unlikely to work properly. Also, you can scale bones, but if you scale on individual axes, the snapping is also unlikely to work properly.
This is awesome. Sorry for imitately asking for features, but is IK to IK possible? For example, for crawling, a knee ik setup would make it easy, especially with a movable pivot.
@@kenonerboy you might be able to amend it by building on top of it. A pinning option like you're talking about is toward the top of my list of improvements I want to make to the setup
we must already animate the character to then pass the movements on my person that I made on blender ? I don't understand because I have a person that I would like to animate like in this video ? Excuse me for my English. I'm French.
If you created your own model, you can rig this system onto that character and animate with it. I just updated the subtitles (closed-captioning) for the video, which might help communicate better via translation. Cheers :)
What sort of presets? Sounds like a rigging tutorial would be helpful for people, and the end of the video shows you how to rig, but there's also a lot of quality tutorials out there on assigning weights that are separate from the kinematic tool procedure.
Hmm, I've never really considered using FK/IK for hair, I just imagine sticking with FK for hair usually, but you might be imagining something totally unique.
@@slephy i wanna learn animations, i already got the basics for hard surface and sculpting. What would your suggestions be? Where should i start? Everything in the video kinda confused me but it still entertaining
@@zip2830 I started by practicing very very simple animations, like jumping, walking, and running. And you'll always get a lot of value out of practicing the principles like squash & stretch with simple animatable balls. Look up the "12 principles of animation" video which helps to describe the major tools you'll lean on for descriptive animation. Also: if you think of everything as a spring, you'll do well. For instance, you can't jump without squatting.
Hi again. I've just tried using this again and I'm having an issue (Self inflicted I'm sure but I cant figure it out). When I use this and try to move the body, via anything at and above the hips, it leaves the limbs behind, stretching the vertices between the bones. I can't figure out why. Before creating the kinematics tool bones they are connected fine and move with fk as expected. From what I can tell the bones that should be connected are connected and the upper legs and arms are parented with keep offest. Any ideas?
@@Hyruleearth If I understand the problem properly, it sounds like you haven't setup the parenting properly. Check the chapter of this video on rigging. There's a section on parenting. Let me know if it's a different issue.
@@slephyThank you. I still think it's something I messed up but when I set up generic IK on my limbs they work correctly. Before setting up the kinematics tool and this problem occurring, I had already rigged and then used the kinematic tool once. That first setup, I believe I rigged some things incorrectly because after using the kinematics tool all the targets were pointing in the wrong direction. So I deleted the rig and started again. Now everything points the right way when I set it up but I have this new problem that I mentioned. Could my problem be caused but not deleting the kinematics tool setup correctly? I think I completely deleted everything but there's a very real chance I missed things. Other problems that I've seamed to cause are the auto update for FK to IK positions.
@@Hyruleearth if you deleted everything and started from scratch, it shouldn't be a problem. Simplify your problem by first getting it to work on just a limb and working out from there, or even just creating a standalone three-bone armature and playing around with it. It's possible you're overlooking something.
@@slephy Thanks for that info. I can get it to work on any limb that isn't connected to anything and it's leading me to think it's something like "keep offset" that isn't working. When making a limb that all works correctly its just the following the parents part that isn't working. I created a new rig in the same project and am still having the same issue. if you have any other thought's I'm happy to give them a try?
@@Hyruleearth have you watched the rigging section of this video that explains parenting, or checked the rigging section of the user manual that explains parenting?
I don't, but that's a good idea because I do have at least a handful of things I'd like to add and work on that should add more value to the tool. I'd just hate to make a certain timeline out of it, since everything to improve is novel and takes an undeterminable amount of time to research and deploy. On top of that, my website can use some more love, so there's always more to improve :)
Hmm, if you're just building off of a base deformation layer, then yes. But I wouldn't recommend building off of their mechanical assemblies. Lotta peeps have recommended some sort of conversion, so I'm aware it would be a useful addition to the tool.
@@slephy yeah. Most Animators dont like rigging so they use automatic rigging tools so would be really cool if we can just add these functions to rigify or auto rig pro! Cheers on making such a great tool 🙏
The link still seems to be working, but if it's not working for you, you can always go to slephy.gumroad.com and use code KT15 on the Kinematic Tool until Sept 16.
yes, for mechs you'll just need to be conscious of the tiny stretch on the ik bones, or if you turn off the stretch be aware of yanking the foot bone away from the leg
OKAY HOLD ON. How did you hide the bone in the view port and still be able to use them?? I have an extremely similar issue in blender with thousands of meshes where hiding them makes it hard to work with their exisitng animation. It's insanely annoying needing to shift things around and not being able to view all of your keys.
This looks amazing! How does is do exporting for use in game engines? Have you considered maybe working with the Auto-rig Pro developer to bring this functionality there?
Thanks :) Yeah I've considered creating a conversion for some of the more comprehensive rigging addons. For exporting to other game engines, check the other comments, I've answered this a few times. Cheers :)
@@spittingame4241 Not currently, unless you're just using auto-rig pro to assemble your base deformation bones, then the Kinematic Tool can build on top of that.
@@MetalGearMk3 If you do as most game devs do and bake your actions to the deformation bones and export only your deformation bones, it should be alright, although I haven't tried it personally to unreal, I've exported this way to Godot countless times. You'll probably need to troubleshoot scaling differences between unreal and Blender, as is commonly the case.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like animating 2025 solves these fundamental problems. There's a lot of good changes they have planned, but those changes are mostly cherries on sundaes IMO
It would be nice if you could pair this tool with mocap rigging data using stock footage to capture movements you want for your animation, and setting limb constraints of how much limbs can twist and turn, because there are limits to how much limbs can twist and rotate, but with variable flexibility for Hypermobility if you choose to have that for certain character animations.
@@rcguy2175 Take another look on the left of the download page, if you don't see it, send me an email with the email you used to purchase and i'll send you an invite.
This is why blender is crazy. The community is insanely talented. Thanks mate!
💪 You're welcome :)
This is how animation should be done in every software. Creative freedom in the hands of the animator.
💪
Blender needs to give people like you funding.
Exactly
its crazy how somewhere around the globe there's someone with a "what if" idea, keep going Slephy!
@@ArvinAnimates 🤘
Some people compare Blender to Maya or 3dsMax, pointing out the limitations of the free programs. Paid programs such as Maya or 3ds Max may support more sophisticated plug-ins or add-ons developed for commercial use, but Blender does not. But what they overlooked is that Blender's user base is incredibly large, and among them are many very talented and capable users just like you. Thanks for awesome video!
That's very kind of you, and you're welcome :) 😎💪
Thank you so much for giving regional pricing to the plugin, as I am from Turkey I deeply appreciate it.
You're welcome :) Gotta help out my international animators 💪
@@slephy im from turkey too. now i can make my finals. thank you😭✊
Changing the Pivot point is SO CRAZY! Revolutionary for blender, maya has that! Never thought blender could
with this tool no one ever needs maya full-body ik rig for animation. good job bro👏
@@axolo-t6u Thanks :)
If just the rigging is easier than ARP I'll take it! I'm amazed with the granular level of detail you were able to pull out of the videos and turned to animation. That's a skill right there!
Thanks :)
Amazing! IK/FK chain snapping alone is worth it. And you rock for supporting the power parity based on my location thing. I'll buy after I get pay next month.
Thanks! Gotta help out my international animators :P
even those lil dudes are dope af. Excellent product and pitch!
Thanks :)
I bought it and i have to say the presentation of the Prototypers is fucking stellar! Bravo!
yeeeeeeee 😎w00t w00t
Bro, great video, I'm just starting out with Blender and I wish you could update the last paragraph rigging part of the video to make it easier to apply like Auto rig pro, or at least have more tutorials for beginners to follow step by step, because it's still a bit difficult for me.
Bloody hell this is brilliant!
A lot big brain thinking here to make animating what it should be, easy. well done mate 🍉🍉🍉
@@AdamEarleArtist Thanks! And your input on everything really made a huge difference 💪
WHAAAAAAT??? MY LIFESAVER!💪🏽 PEOPLE LIKE YOU MAKE OUR BLENDER COMMUNITY SO AWESOME!
🙏😎
such a talented developer... awesome!
thanks, that's very kind of you :)
Just bought. It's amazing.
gonna buy this tomorrow. You cooked oh my lord I need this kinda stuff, especially since I am starting to animate more and could use every tool to help learn possible
yeeeeeee 🔥
I love blender because of people like you thanks alot
🤗
I've just bought the add-on and I was wondering if you'd consider making a video of the rigging process from scratch for a human shaped character? I'm somewhat new to blender and I'm not sure how to apply it to the basic rig I have. I am going through the manual but, because of my limited knowledge, my progress is slow.
Sounds good, that type of video would definitely be useful :)
@@slephy Awesome! If there’s a high likelihood of you making that video in the next three months I could move onto other parts of my game while i wait for it to release. Is it something that you could see possibly happening in that time? I totally get you’re probably busy and there’s now way to know for sure but I thought I’d ask as I’m behind on other parts of the game that I could spend time on while waiting for your video. No worries if you can’t say anything just yet as well.
@@Hyruleearth I don't make promises, but that looks like something I'll be able to do in the next few months. Others have requested this as well.
You are breathtaking.
I've been wanting this for so long and I've tried to make my own but it's too much work. This will really allow animation to be stress free.
yeah lol it's been quite a ride getting it to this point. I'm glad others find value in it as well :)
I have basically just started learning the animation side of blender but this looks like it makes managing the different rigs and doing full body animations like your examples soo much easier. Do you think this would be worth picking up for me as someone who barely knows what an FK and IK rig are in the first place?
Yeah, for context you might want to research IK/FK switching on youtube, there's some good general overviews out there. As soon as you start animating with the conventional systems or try to do anything fancy or particular with leg movement, you'll quickly discover why I built this
This is a really cool way of working- I've already got a character rigged with ARP that I'm committed to for this project, but I'm assuming since this is a control rig that sits on top of deform bones I should just be able to add it to any character that has bones? Cascadeur has an IK/FK workflow that is like this and it's super convenient, would love to have it in Blender as well.
This can assemble on any 3-bone chain. I recommend assembling it on the deformation layer.
this is nuts! i'll have to save up a bit to get this but this will make everything soooo much easier!
Yeah, I feel like I can actually animate now, rather than twisting a bunch of knobs and pressing buttons half the time.
This is amazing!!!! 👏👏👏👏
Haha thanks :) very kind of you
totally worth it. I'll buy this
I wish there was an automatic setup for auto rig pro here. It wouldve helped out soooo much! Def going to buy tho
Absolutely brilliant. Great work!
🤘😎
It's a great tool that helps with *animation* part of the workflow. But I think it pales in comparison to ARP in terms of *rigging* part. ARP do a whole more things automatically for you. For example, automatic twist bones, bendy bones, fan bones, stretch parameter in N-panel, ropes IK, face rig, better symmetrize, and probably much more. It would be great if there was a way to make a whole rig with ARP, but animate with Kinematic Tool.
@@GAMERRAZUMNO yeah I didn't build the tool to compete with any of the more comprehensive rigging add-ons. I built it to solve a core problem that wastes time for nearly every animator. None of those other bells and whistles you listed matter to me if I'm wasting time on a core part of animating: editing a pose that deals with ik/fk.
Do you guy know any good Rigging tutorial that are both newbie and advanced for blender here ? (even if it not on blender, I'm fine with it if it teach general knowledge that can apply for any software here).
@@haiangnguyentruong2968 there's actually quite a bit on TH-cam, have you searched around?
This looks very interesting! I'm currently learning to build my own advanced rig in Blender after being disappointed by what I got from rigify and ARP, this might be a great addition at the perfect time. One question about it, you say it works on any 3-bone chain which is great, but what if you have extra twist bones in your arms and legs, can it be adapted to work with that kind of setup?
@@setha.9867 yeah for any sort of tweak or twist bones, just build on top of the base 3 deformation bones by parenting to them. That way the system doesn't have anything between the arrangement, but you can still attach to it.
@@slephy Great that's exactly what I was hoping I could do I just wanted to be sure. Thanks!
I'm currently watching this video, and it looks like genuine wizardry! Quick question though, does this include some sort of facial rigging capability? Like rigify's face rigs?
Nope, it's focused solely on speeding up the IK/FK workflow on limbs. My goal wasn't to compete with other more comprehensive rigging addons and instead focus on an area of animation that can improve 99% of animators lives.
@@slephy Fair enough. Like you mentioned, maybe there's a way to combine them together. Still, it's a fantastic tool!
@@ShienlanMiitsues thanks, we'll see, I have some ideas :)
Damn you're Amazing I subbed
😎💪
I see at 2:20 you added timestamps.
You should also add this to the description of the video. Make sure to add one at 0:00 so the chapter selector shows up.
Yes, you're awesome. Thank you for letting me know. I just added chapters.
is this a new rigging system or is it compatible with Auto Rig Pro or any rigify?
I guess at the end animation can also be baked and just transfered to a different type of rig. But I'm wondering.
It's a new rigging system, but if you're savvy you can find a way to integrate it with others.
It looks fantastic. Is it possible to export to Unreal Engine? Does it work with Mixamo?
For exporting to Unreal, if you do as most game devs do and bake your actions to the deformation bones and export only your deformation bones, it should be alright, although I haven't tried it personally to Unreal, I've exported this way to Godot countless times. You'll probably need to troubleshoot scaling differences between Unreal and Blender, as is commonly the case.
As far as Mixamo, I have no idea. If the amount and names of bones match from Mixamo onto the FK chain, it might work, but I really have no idea, I've never tried it before with Mixamo.
this looks amazing.
does this work on animation exports for game engines like unity?
i tried making my own fk/ik switch before but it was glitchy in-engine.
UPDATE: It does work on Unity, I had a character rigged and animated. Thanks!
Consider that the grand majority of game devs never export any of the trick/mechanical/animation bones into engines, instead they just bake their animation actions onto the deformation bones as part of the export process and export only the deformation bones, then in engine, when an action or event occurs, the engine plays the animation.
I'm not aware of any engines that have constraint settings that work 1-for-1 with Blender. I haven't exported to Unity, but I've exported to Godot countless times using the method I described. When exporting to Unity, if I understand correctly, there are some scaling differences between Unity and Blender, so you'll just have to troubleshoot that hurdle.
I know Godot has some of its own in-engine IK systems but I have yet to really dive into that. Unity probably has its own little IK rig components as well. Cheers.
@@slephy I think the problem I had was I didn't automate baking/applying the keyframes after switching ik/fk drivers.
But that got addressed on the first part of your video.
@@sleipnir_8364 Yeah there's various approaches, the baking after snapping is an old school way
@@slephy You use Godot? Thats awesome. Can you make a video on how you used that method when exporting to Godot? Also subbed, always good to find another Godot/Blender content creator
@@Hero774 Another person suggested that topic as well, sounds like it would be useful. Thanks for the suggestion 👍
looks really cool! But I'm broke af so I can't buy it. Yet I hope it will develop nicely :) congrats and good luck!
I'll definitely have to get this when I have income again, the effective and efficient UX looks like an absolute game changer
I am wondering, can the follow rotation system be used on the first bone of an assembly?
This would be for the upper arm's fk getting it's rotation from the chest/rigcage instead of the shoulder. If not that's no biggie I could just add a modifier in the stack
It is too bad assemblies can't overlap, switching from regular arm ik to forearm - upper arm - shoulder ik when a character places their arm on surface would be amazing with that kind of pivoting system
Oh I see what you're saying. So if I understand correctly, you're probably looking to do more of a pinning system, where the elbow/knee stays in place (although more specifically it sounds like you want to swing an arm in FK past a certain joint).
If you're savvy you can probably find a work around. The system doesn't allow a bone to be part of more than one assembly, and the FK base already has its own follow-rotation, so you'll probably have to jury rig it in a wild way to get what you're looking for. Just try and add to the assembly by parenting to it, rather than inserting bones between the assembly, since inserting between will likely cause some undesired results.
Toward the top of my list is a pinning setup for the knee/elbow since there are some sweeeeet animations I'm looking to do that really rely heavily on that functionality, and I don't want to leave it on the wayside.
@@slephy Sorry I wrote that confusingly, I was talking about two arm things:
1. Making it so the arm gets it's rotation from the ribcage instead of the shoulder while in fk mode to avoid having to counter-animate the shoulder's movement (which now that I think about it I could just swap out the target of the FK's follow rotation);
2. overlapping assemblies for robust elbow/forearm pinning
It's good to hear you're looking to do knee/elbow pinning. Imo they require different implementations since a simple knee pin wouldn't work for the arm because the upper arm and shoulder demand ik where a thigh doesn't, which is why I was going on about what overlapping assemblies would be good for, when the elbow/forearm is planted the ideal behavior would be just like a leg (forearm = foot with adjustable pivot, upper arm = shin, shoulder = thigh, and a pole target would rotate the upper arm and shoulder). I can code pretty well so I may end up hacking it in at some point in the future in which case I'll just show you visually
@@within_the_sky2356 That would be cool to see a solution to what you're thinking. Personally, I'm not into the collarbone being part of the IK chain, and I enjoy having it as a separate bone that I control individually, since it really does have its own separate movements, and lifting or moving the arms up and back beyond a certain point is only possible via the scapula and the shoulder joint swinging around. I like to keep things as simple as possible :)
@@slephy Yeah it'd be a vary circumstantial alternate setup, ordinary use-wise having it independent is better for sure
Could you please post a tutorial on how to setup this rig on human character
Huge!
😎
Awesome!! I hope this working with Auto rig pro 😆
I started playing with the add on and it’s way easier than I expected. I do have one question though. My characters elbow is bending on the wrong local axis (z but I need x). Is there a way to fix that? She has an elbow pad so it looks really out of place while bent.
And unrelated to the question, my original confusion was the starting point that my rig needed to be at before using your tool and if there was any specific set up it needed but a plain rig worked perfectly. I’m pretty new to blender so I only understood about half the documentation but that’s on me. I just looked up things I didn’t understand and it made following the instruction easier.
Also, the elbo can only rotate 180 degrees in fk, +/-90. Is there something o can do to enable another -70 degrees (the - direction is the natural bend. The + is broken elbow direction)?
With a bone selected in edit mode, ctrl+r allows you to twist the bone. The Kinematic Tool assembles the joint and bend depending on the direction the joint is pointing, no matter what axis you decide to bend on.
@@slephy Thank you! I've got one more question but first, that made a massive difference. So it's controlled by the "Roll" parameter by the look of it. For some reason it also fixed the forearm to have the 180 degree constraint like how you'd imagine.
For my question, I'm doing anime style animations that tend to exaggerate range of motion/hyper extend joints in the animations but the elbow limit of 180 degrees prevents that. Is there a way for the user to edit that limit?
@@Hyruleearth In pose mode, select the FK middle bone and go to the constraints. There you'll find a Limit Rotation constraint. You can edit or remove it, but snapping (aka aligning) is unlikely to work properly. Also, you can scale bones, but if you scale on individual axes, the snapping is also unlikely to work properly.
@@slephy Thank you! I appreciate the help.
Nice to meet you.
I am a beginner in rigging and animation, but will I be able to use this tool properly even as someone like me?
@@TeacupPotato Yeah this is made to be easy to use, so if you have some basic knowledge in both animation and rigging, you'll get value out of it.
This is awesome.
Sorry for imitately asking for features, but is IK to IK possible? For example, for crawling, a knee ik setup would make it easy, especially with a movable pivot.
@@kenonerboy you might be able to amend it by building on top of it. A pinning option like you're talking about is toward the top of my list of improvements I want to make to the setup
@slephy i actually used to work on a ik to ik system, but i didnt know how how to do half of the stuff u already did.
@@kenonerboy cool, yeah there's a lot of ways to approach this sort of problem
Actually, i looked at my stuff again, and i actually already solved it lol, would u like to take a look?
@@kenonerboy Nice, good work! If you're in the discord (you get access if you purchase through Gumroad), feel free to share :)
we must already animate the character to then pass the movements on my person that I made on blender ?
I don't understand because I have a person that I would like to animate like in this video ? Excuse me for my English.
I'm French.
If you created your own model, you can rig this system onto that character and animate with it.
I just updated the subtitles (closed-captioning) for the video, which might help communicate better via translation. Cheers :)
Maybe a preset template would be good, how do you assign weights? A rigging tutorial from scratch would be good as well.
What sort of presets?
Sounds like a rigging tutorial would be helpful for people, and the end of the video shows you how to rig, but there's also a lot of quality tutorials out there on assigning weights that are separate from the kinematic tool procedure.
@@slephy Like rigify you have a human armadure or quadruped.
You made a plugin? How to make it, i also have several ideas on how to improve animations but idk how to approach to making a plugin.
Could this work for wiggle bones eg: hair. Like when the ballerina spins, the character ponytail spins with it?
Hmm, I've never really considered using FK/IK for hair, I just imagine sticking with FK for hair usually, but you might be imagining something totally unique.
Every time I watch a video like this I'm reminded of my lack of intelligence.
:(
Anyone kind enough where I can get this type of rig so I can use it as an example for animation?
@@zip2830 The tool comes with pre-rigged models so you can use them in your own animations.
@@slephy i wanna learn animations, i already got the basics for hard surface and sculpting. What would your suggestions be? Where should i start? Everything in the video kinda confused me but it still entertaining
@@zip2830 I started by practicing very very simple animations, like jumping, walking, and running. And you'll always get a lot of value out of practicing the principles like squash & stretch with simple animatable balls. Look up the "12 principles of animation" video which helps to describe the major tools you'll lean on for descriptive animation. Also: if you think of everything as a spring, you'll do well. For instance, you can't jump without squatting.
Nice
incredible fucking work.
By any chance this works fine for 4.1? I'd love to experiment with this but just don't want to just update to 4.2 because... reasons.
Yes, the tool (v2.0.3) works in Blender 4.1
Hi again. I've just tried using this again and I'm having an issue (Self inflicted I'm sure but I cant figure it out). When I use this and try to move the body, via anything at and above the hips, it leaves the limbs behind, stretching the vertices between the bones. I can't figure out why. Before creating the kinematics tool bones they are connected fine and move with fk as expected. From what I can tell the bones that should be connected are connected and the upper legs and arms are parented with keep offest. Any ideas?
@@Hyruleearth If I understand the problem properly, it sounds like you haven't setup the parenting properly. Check the chapter of this video on rigging. There's a section on parenting. Let me know if it's a different issue.
@@slephyThank you. I still think it's something I messed up but when I set up generic IK on my limbs they work correctly. Before setting up the kinematics tool and this problem occurring, I had already rigged and then used the kinematic tool once. That first setup, I believe I rigged some things incorrectly because after using the kinematics tool all the targets were pointing in the wrong direction. So I deleted the rig and started again. Now everything points the right way when I set it up but I have this new problem that I mentioned. Could my problem be caused but not deleting the kinematics tool setup correctly? I think I completely deleted everything but there's a very real chance I missed things. Other problems that I've seamed to cause are the auto update for FK to IK positions.
@@Hyruleearth if you deleted everything and started from scratch, it shouldn't be a problem. Simplify your problem by first getting it to work on just a limb and working out from there, or even just creating a standalone three-bone armature and playing around with it. It's possible you're overlooking something.
@@slephy Thanks for that info. I can get it to work on any limb that isn't connected to anything and it's leading me to think it's something like "keep offset" that isn't working. When making a limb that all works correctly its just the following the parents part that isn't working. I created a new rig in the same project and am still having the same issue. if you have any other thought's I'm happy to give them a try?
@@Hyruleearth have you watched the rigging section of this video that explains parenting, or checked the rigging section of the user manual that explains parenting?
How is exporting to game engines like godot/unreal/unity?
Check the pinned comment, I've answered this question several times. :)
Do I get it right, I can animate any skeleton that doesn't have any manual IK/FK setup?
You can rig the assembly on a base layer, like a deformation layer.
Do you have a public roadmap for this addon?
I don't, but that's a good idea because I do have at least a handful of things I'd like to add and work on that should add more value to the tool. I'd just hate to make a certain timeline out of it, since everything to improve is novel and takes an undeterminable amount of time to research and deploy. On top of that, my website can use some more love, so there's always more to improve :)
opinions on cascadeur?
I wanna buy this since I’m just starting animation my worry is I’m gonna be skipping something important if I don’t start from the basics
No problem :P Once you start getting deeper into it, you'll see why I made the tool 😆
that's small detail at the foot there.. ❤
i have a question? i have normal rig does convert the rig this addon? or i need remake rig and weightpaint?
You can build on your deformation bones.
@@slephy so is possible to use on top like a layer intested of remake everything, like a editing but for ik. That's cool thxx 🙏🏻
Would this work with quadruped rigs?
@@t1sk1jukka yep. Any 3-bone chain. If there's a fourth joint, use the follow-rotation assembly. Treat it the same way you would a leg and toe box.
Can we apply this to a rigged model from Rigify or auto rig pro addons?
Hmm, if you're just building off of a base deformation layer, then yes. But I wouldn't recommend building off of their mechanical assemblies.
Lotta peeps have recommended some sort of conversion, so I'm aware it would be a useful addition to the tool.
@@slephy yeah. Most Animators dont like rigging so they use automatic rigging tools so would be really cool if we can just add these functions to rigify or auto rig pro! Cheers on making such a great tool 🙏
Does this work with 4.2.1 lts version of blender
Yes, Blender v4.2.1 is what I used to create this video
The discount link doesnt work for me for some reason :/
The link still seems to be working, but if it's not working for you, you can always go to slephy.gumroad.com and use code KT15 on the Kinematic Tool until Sept 16.
Do some of the features work with other rigs like rigify?
Not currently, you'll need to use the rigging options within the Kinematic Tool to get access to the features.
How do know when a new update is available
@@rcguy2175 I'll send out an email to owners, I have one coming out soon for this current version
does this work with ARP?
@@poochyboi There's currently no conversion available with ARP.
@@slephy i crie everteim.
can i use this to animate scfi mechs robots airplanes
yes, for mechs you'll just need to be conscious of the tiny stretch on the ik bones, or if you turn off the stretch be aware of yanking the foot bone away from the leg
@@slephy thank you
@@rcguy2175 you're welcome :)
OKAY HOLD ON. How did you hide the bone in the view port and still be able to use them?? I have an extremely similar issue in blender with thousands of meshes where hiding them makes it hard to work with their exisitng animation. It's insanely annoying needing to shift things around and not being able to view all of your keys.
@12:56 muahahha.
Do we have cascadeur inside blender?
@@ManAtPlay Not sure
Im new to blender so animation may have to wait til i learn the basic tools and ui
GOD
That's a sub
How long did this addon take to make ?
I spent about a year on v2.
This looks amazing! How does is do exporting for use in game engines? Have you considered maybe working with the Auto-rig Pro developer to bring this functionality there?
Thanks :) Yeah I've considered creating a conversion for some of the more comprehensive rigging addons.
For exporting to other game engines, check the other comments, I've answered this a few times. Cheers :)
@@slephy Ah, my bad. I should have checked first.
@@user-rx3xl7zn1u All good, I just pinned a message to the top to help 👍
Does this work with Auto-Rig Pro?
@@spittingame4241 Not currently, unless you're just using auto-rig pro to assemble your base deformation bones, then the Kinematic Tool can build on top of that.
@@slephy I see. Thank you.
Well, I’m buying this on payday.
@@JohnSlaughterND 🤘
Is this rig compatible with UE5?
@@MetalGearMk3 If you do as most game devs do and bake your actions to the deformation bones and export only your deformation bones, it should be alright, although I haven't tried it personally to unreal, I've exported this way to Godot countless times. You'll probably need to troubleshoot scaling differences between unreal and Blender, as is commonly the case.
@@slephy thanks , yea I just export deformation bones to UE5.
I don't understand anything but thank you.
😆
Works with autorig?
Not currently
But i have it downloaded so its there
😎
Damm!
@@wolflyset 😎
cant pay with paypal ?
I don't like the paypal arrangement at the moment, but perhaps in the future.
i was coming for some speech on how Kinematics are cool. youtube lied to me
@@TrapizoidX surprise 😆
I'd rather wait for animating 2025 ?!
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like animating 2025 solves these fundamental problems. There's a lot of good changes they have planned, but those changes are mostly cherries on sundaes IMO
Does this work in 2.93.9?
No, since this tool relies on Bone Collections, introduced in Blender 4.0
@@slephy bummer
@@alexanderreed1071 what's holding you back from installing the latest versions?
@slephy some of the button changes, and I'm mis project so can't really switch atm
@@alexanderreed1071 indeed
I think it's cool. But I am waaaay to far away from ik rigging 😅
All in time :)
this guys sounds like thor
im feeling really dumb watching this 😅
@@Reaching1 😆🤘
if this is compatible with autorig pro then you will strike gold
That's very generous of you :)
Bro I've just been watching a bunch of blender stuff. I haven't even made a model yet😂
Well then, looks like you're in luck 😉
This is amazing. do you have any social media so I can follow your work?
can you make a proper rigging tutorial ? it would help
@@AkashKumarUG you're looking for a full body tut? Which specific area is confusing for you?
@@slephy full body
I was about to buy it but then I saw the Tip in the checkout and quickly closed it.
The tip culture is getting out of hand.
oh that's on by default. gumroad turned it on across the board. you can still enjoy the product without tipping. if not it's all good :)
if only i could speak your language to be able understand what you are saying.
Hi, if you speak another language (not English), I took the time to clean up the subtitles/closed-captioning. It may help with your language.
Jo
It would be nice if you could pair this tool with mocap rigging data using stock footage to capture movements you want for your animation, and setting limb constraints of how much limbs can twist and turn, because there are limits to how much limbs can twist and rotate, but with variable flexibility for Hypermobility if you choose to have that for certain character animations.
Do you have a discord link
If you purchased through gumroad, check the product download page, there's a link to discord (I think it's on the left panel).
@slephy I did purchase through gumroad,but after I checked out I didn't see the Discord link
@@rcguy2175 Take another look on the left of the download page, if you don't see it, send me an email with the email you used to purchase and i'll send you an invite.
@@slephy I got the link i just joined your discord