There are plenty of threads discussing this topic on the forum but some of them are really old and irrelevant so I thought it would be good to have a fresh thread for the current version of mGear.
My first post will be for animators or people new to mGear and the next post will be about setting up the “Space switches”.
A. Space switches, where do you find them?
When I first started using mGear and mGear rigs I was totally confused about space switches mostly because of the terminology used and the location of the space switches
In mGear, space switches are called “references” instead of spaces or switches and are not located on the related limb but instead, you will find them on “Host controls” often found at the root of the character.
For FK we will simply talk about "references" and for IK we will talk about “IK references” and both will be found on those “Host controls”. Beware, sometimes the FK spaces will also be set in the IK references drop down menu This is the case for the head of my Sagat rig.
Here is an example for the arm of my Low Po Sagat character :
a. Here are the two FK spaces I setup, the first one is my World Space and the second one the Local Space.
b. And here are the two IK spaces. Similarly to the FK, the first “IK reference” is my “World space” and the second the “Local Space”:
c. The “UpV ref” is for the space switch of the Pole Vector
The “Elbow pinning” is found in the “Elbow Ref” section :
2. IK FK Match
As you can see in the channel editor, this is also on that “host” that you would find the “IK FK switch (blend)”.
FK is 0 and IK is 1 but mGear has some really cool features and a built-in “IK FK match” which you can simply access with a RMB (right mouse button click) in the viewport while having the “Host” selected. [No you don’t need to use the Synoptic view as suggested in some old threads]
And as you can see, you will also be able to access the “Space switches” from that flying panel, in addition to “Mirror functions”. How cool is that?
That should cover “Space switches” for users and new people. In my next post I will tackle the creation of the switches.
O.