Hi,

Often we need to switch between IK\FK or match the pose.
What are the possible ways to do that?

As I imagine it so far:
We need a python script, to update the FK promoted parameters of the asset to the IK transformations?

Yeah, I think if you want to do it the traditional way, then it's pretty much a script just like you would at the OBJ level except where you get the transform values.

There's are more interesting approaches now in the procedural world though. For example, what if had an IK rig HDA that we could just append to the skeleton and animate that, we can then sequence and blend it back on top of the input animation. Or vice versa, work with an IK base rig and then when we want to do some FK animation, just append a Rig Pose to do some FK tweaks, and then append the IK rig HDA again to work on a different frame range.

That's cool, I was thinking about something like this, but wasn't sure if that would be tcorrect and handy for animators.
Thanks

Anyone got a working solution for this?

It's pretty easy to set up both ways (although I admit I haven't built the FK/IK match pose portion yet).

You can set up parallel chains to do a more traditional FK/IK blend:

Split your node tree so that you use the basic skeleton setup as your FK setup and use a side chain to set up IK controls. Then at the end use a skeleton blend node to blend between. This video has a good example of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJG7KH_RG1Y [www.youtube.com]

But, like Edward says above, you can also do a rig where after you've set up your IK chains and controls, you just append another rigpose node and now you have FK controls that you can use separately (without IK) or on top of (after the IK) for additional control.

Or you could have both set-ups in a single rig: Do an FK/IK blend set up with additional FK tweak controls after it.

Or you could create multiple HDA rigs for different setup and append one after the other.

KineFX is (by sideFX own admission) still a work in progress. It currently works better for retargeting, but the low level tools are all there for keyframing character animation. It's just a little less intuitive.

But the exciting things is that thinking about rigging as something procedural means you can start to build up the equivalents to animation layers by stacking various rigpose nodes or HDAs one after the other.