Kinematics

In the world of 3D animation, the term kinematics describes the movement of a linked structure. There are two types of kinematics that can be used with linked objects: forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics (IK).

With forward kinematics, when a parent in the chain moves or rotates, the children under it also move or rotate. This was the only method of kinematics available in the early days of computer animation, and it still has many uses.

With inverse kinematics, you can move a child object and have the parent objects rotate accordingly. For example, you could move a character’s foot to cause the thigh and calf to move and rotate appropriately.

One of the primary tasks of Character Studio is to simplify the process of sticking ...

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