Create symbol instances on the Stage. To save time later, arrange the instances so that they approximate spatial configuration you want.
Inverse kinematics (IK) is a way of animating objects using bones chained into linear or branched armatures in parent-child relationships. When one bone moves, connected bones move in relation to it.
Inverse kinematics lets you easily create natural motion. To animate using inverse kinematics, you simply specify the start and end positions of bones on the Timeline. Animate automatically interpolates the positions of the bones in the armature between the starting and ending frames.
You can use IK in the following ways:
By using a shape as a container for multiple bones. For example, you can add bones to a drawing of a snake so that it slithers realistically. You can draw these shapes in Object Drawing mode.
By chaining symbol instances. For example, you can link movie clips showing a torso, arm, lower arm, and hand so that they move realistically in relation to each other. Each instance has only one bone.
There are 4 ways that Animate can draw bones on the Stage:
To set the Bone Style, select the IK span in the Timeline and then select the style from the Style menu in the Options section of the Properties panel.
Note: If you save a document with the Bone Style set to None, Animate automatically changes bone style to Line the next time you open the document.
When you add bones to symbol instances or shapes, Animate creates a new layer for them in the Timeline. This new layer is called the pose layer. Animate adds the pose layer to the Timeline between existing layers to maintain the previous stacking order of objects on the Stage.
You can add IK bones to movie clip, graphic, and button instances. To use text, convert it to a symbol first. The symbol instances can be on different layers before you add bones. Animate adds them to the pose layer.
Note: You can also break text apart (Modify > Break Apart) into separate shapes and use bones with the individual shapes.
As you chain objects, consider the parent-child relationships you want to create, for example, from shoulder to elbow to wrist.
Create symbol instances on the Stage. To save time later, arrange the instances so that they approximate spatial configuration you want.
Select the Bone tool from the Tools panel.
Click the symbol instance that you want to set as the root bone of the armature. Click at the point where you want to attach the bone to the symbol.
By default, Animate creates the bone at the location of mouse click. For a more precise way of adding a bone, turn off Auto Set Transformation Point for IK Bone Tool (Edit > Preferences > Drawing). With Auto Set Transformation Point turned off, the bone will snap to the symbol transformation point when you click from one symbol to the next.
Drag to another symbol instance and release the mouse button at the point where you want to attach it.
To add another bone to the armature, drag from the tail of the first bone to the next symbol instance.
It’s easier to place the tail precisely if you turn off Snap To Objects (View > Snapping > Snap To Objects).
To create a branched armature, click the head of an existing bone where you want the branch to begin. Then drag to create the first bone of the new branch.
An armature can have as many branches as necessary.
Note: A branch cannot connect to another branch except at its root.
To reposition the elements of the completed armature, drag either the bones or the instances themselves.
After you create an armature, you can still add new instances from different layers to the armature. Drag a new bone to the new instance and Animate moves the instance to the pose layer of the armature.
You add bones to a single shape or to a group of shapes that are on the same layer. In either case, you must select all the shapes before adding the first bone. After you add bones, Animate converts all the shapes and bones into an IK shape object and moves the object to a new pose layer.
After you have added bones to a shape, the shape has the following limitations:
Create a filled shape or shapes on the Stage.
The shape can contain multiple colors and strokes. Edit the shapes so they are as close to their final form as possible. Once you add bones to a shape, the options for editing the shape become more limited.
If the shape is too complex, Animate will prompt you to convert it to a movie clip before adding bones.
Select the entire shape on the Stage.
If the shape contains multiple color areas or strokes, drag a selection rectangle around the shape to ensure that the entire shape is selected.
Select the Bone tool in the Tools panel.
With the Bone tool, click inside the shape and drag to another location within the shape.
To add another bone, drag from the tail of the first bone to another location in within the shape.
The second bone becomes a child of the root bone. Link areas of the shape with bones in the order of the parent-child relationships you want to create. For example, link from shoulder to elbow to wrist.
To create a branched armature, click the head of an existing bone where you want the branch to begin. Then drag to create the first bone of the new branch.
An armature can have as many branches as necessary.
Note: A branch cannot connect to another branch except at its root.
To move the armature, select the IK shape object with the Selection tool and then drag any of the bones to move them.
Once the shape becomes an IK shape, it has the following limitations:
On-stage controls allow you to easily make rotation and translation adjustments on the stage with the help of guides that show the rotation range and precise control. The on-state controls also allow you to continue working on the stage without having to go back to the property inspector to adjust rotation.
To work with the rotation controls, do the following:
Note: When you edit the rotation that you have already defined, you can increase or decrease the borders by clicking on the line and dragging.
You can use the translation controls as follows:
You can’t edit IK armatures if the pose layer includes poses after the first frame of the Timeline. Before editing, delete any additional poses after the first frame of the armature in the Timeline.
If you are simply repositioning an armature for animation purposes, you can change positions in any frame of the pose layer. Animate converts the frame to a pose frame.
Do one of the following:
Note: The Subselection tool does not work if there are multiple poses in the IK span. Before editing, delete any additional poses after the first frame of the armature in the Timeline.
You can add, delete, and edit control points of the contours in an IK shape using the Subselection tool.
Note: An IK shape cannot be transformed (scaled or skewed).
By default, the control points of a shape are connected to the bone that is nearest to them. You can use the Bind tool to edit the connections between individual bones and the shape control points. In this way you can control how the stroke distorts when each bone moves for better results. This technique is useful when the stroke of a shape does not distort as you want when the armature moves.
You can bind multiple control points to a bone and multiple bones to a control point.
To highlight the control points connected to a bone, click the bone with the Bind tool.
The connected points are highlighted in yellow while the selected bone is highlighted in red. Control points connected to only one bone appear as squares. Control points connected to more than one bone appear as triangles.
To add control points to a selected bone, Shift-click a control point that is not highlighted.
You can also Shift-drag to select multiple control points to add to the selected bone.
To remove control points from the bone, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Option-click (Macintosh) a control point that is highlighted in yellow.
You can also Ctrl-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Macintosh) to remove multiple control points from the selected bone.
To highlight the bones connected to a control point, click the control point with the Bind tool.
The connected bones are highlighted in yellow while the selected control point is highlighted in red.
To add other bones to the selected control point, Shift-click a bone.
To remove a bone from a selected control point, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Option-click (Macintosh) a bone that is highlighted in yellow.
To create more realistic motion of IK armatures, you can control the freedom of motion of specific bones. For example, you can constrain two bones of an arm so that the elbow cannot bend in the wrong direction.
By default, each IK bone is assigned a fixed length when the bone is created. Bones can rotate around their parent joint and along the x- and y-axis. However, they cannot move in ways that require the length of their parent bone to change unless you enable x- or y-axis motion. By default, bone rotation is enabled and x- and y-axis motion is disabled.
You can also limit the speed of motion of a bone to create the effect of weight in a bone.
In armatures with strings of connected bones, you cannot contrain the motion of the last joint in any branch of the armature. To give the appearance of contraint of the last joint, use bones with movie clips and connect the last bone to a movie clip that has its alpha property set to zero. Then constrain the next-to-last bone instead of the last one.
Examples:
For an arm, you could constrain the degrees of rotation of the elbow so that it cannot rotate beyond the normal range of motion of a forearm.
To enable a character to move across the Stage, turn on X or Y translation on the root bone. Turn off rotation when using X and Y translation for more accurate movement.
You set these properties in the Property inspector when one or more bones are selected.
To enable a selected bone to move along the x- or y- axis and change the length of its parent bone, select Enable in the Joint: X Translation or Joint: Y Translation section of the Property inspector.
A two-headed arrow appears perpendicular to the bone on the joint to indicate that x-axis motion is enabled. A two-headed arrow appears parallel to the bone on the joint to indicate that y-axis motion is enabled. Enabling both x and y translation for a bone simplifyies the task of positioning the bone when rotation is disabled for the bone.
To limit the amount of motion enabled along the x- or y-axis, select Constrain in the Joint: X Translation or Joint: Y Translation section of the Property inspector and enter a value for the minimum and maximum distance the bone can move.
To disable rotation of the selected bone around the joint, deselect the Enable checkbox in the Joint: Rotation section of the Property inspector.
This checkbox is selected by default.
To constrain rotation of a bone, enter minimum and maximum degrees of rotation in the Joint: Rotation section of the Property inspector.
The degrees of rotation are relative to the parent bone. An arc appears on top of the bone joint indicating the degrees of freedom of rotation.
To make a selected bone stationary relative to its parent bone, disable rotation and x- and y-axis translation.
The bone becomes rigid and follows the motion of its parent.
To limit the speed of motion of a selected bone, enter a value in the Joint Speed field in the Property inspector.
Joint speed gives the bone the effect of weight. The maximum value of 100% is equivalent to unlimited speed.
Two bone properties can be used to add springiness to IK bones. The Strength and Damping properties of bones give real physical movement to IK Bones by integrating dynamic physics into the Bones IK system. These properties allow easier creation of physics-enhanced animation. The Strength and Damping properties give bone animation life-like movement that is highly configurable. It is best to set these properties before adding poses to a pose layer.
Strength: The stiffness of the spring. Higher values create a stiffer spring effect.
Damping: The rate of decay of the spring effect. Higher values cause the springiness to diminish more quickly. A value of 0 causes the springiness to remain at its full strength throughout the frames of the pose layer.
To enable springiness, select one or more bones and set the Strength and Damping values in the Spring section of the Property inspector. The higher the Strength, the more rigid the spring becomes. Damping determines the rate of decay of the spring effect, so the higher the value, the faster the animation ends.
To turn off the Strength and Damping properties, select the pose layer in the Timeline and deselect the Enable checkbox in the Spring section of the Property inspector. This allows you to see on Stage the poses you have defined in the pose layer without the effect of the Spring properties.
The following factors affect the final look of your bones animation when working with the Spring properties. Experiment with adjusting each of these to acheive the final look you want.
The Strength property value.
The Damping property value.
The number of frames between poses in the pose layer.
The total number of frames in the pose layer.
The number of frames between the final pose and the last frame of the pose later.
You animate IK armatures differently from other objects in Animate. With armatures, you simply add frames to the pose layer and reposition the armature on the Stage to create a keyframe. Keyframes in pose layers are called poses. Because IK armatures are typically used for animation purposes, each pose layer acts as a tween layer automatically.
However, IK pose layers are different from tween layers because you cannot tween properties other than bone position in the pose layer. To tween other properties of an IK object such as location, transform, color effects, or filters, enclose the armature and its associated objects in a movie clip or graphic symbol. You can then animate the properties of the symbol using the Insert > Motion Tween command and the Motion Editor panel.
You can also animate IK armatures with ActionScript 3.0 at runtime. If you plan to animate an armature with ActionScript, you cannot animate it in the Timeline. The armature can have only one pose in the pose layer. That pose must be in the first frame in which the armature appears in the pose layer.
Keeping all the on-stage controls always enabled can result in inadvertantly altering the positioning and the properties of your armature. After creating bones and armature for animation, you can turn off the armature editing controls and hints by selecting the Hide armature editing controls and hints checkbox in the property inspector.
IK armatures exist on pose layers in the Timeline. To animate armatures in the Timeline, insert poses by right-clicking a frame in a pose layer and selecting Insert Pose. Use the Selection tool to change the configuration of the armature. Animate automatically interpolates the positions of the bones in the frames between poses.
When you finish, scrub the playhead in the Timeline to preview the animation. You can see the armature positions interpolated in between the pose frames.
You can reposition the armature in the pose frames or add new pose frames at any time.
You can edit the location of poses in the following ways:
To move a pose to a new location, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) a pose and then drag the pose to a new location in the armature.
To copy a pose to a new location, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) a pose and then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Macintosh) the pose to a new location in the armature.
Cut, copy and paste. Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) the pose you want to cut or copy and choose Cut Pose or Copy Pose from the context menu.
Then Ctrl-Click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) the frame in the armature span where you want to paste and choose Paste Pose from the context menu.
To apply tweened effects to IK object properties other than bone position, enclose the object in a movie clip or graphic symbol.
You can nest symbols containing IK armatures within as many layers of other nested symbols as necessary to create your desired effect.
You can use ActionScript 3.0 to control IK armatures connected to shapes or movie clip instances. However, you can’t control armatures connected to graphic or button symbol instances with ActionScript.
Only armatures with a single pose can be controlled with ActionScript. Armatures with more than one pose can only be controlled in the Timeline.
The hierarchy can now be manipulated with ActionScript 3.0 at runtime.
By default, the armature name in the Property inspector is the same as the pose layer name. Use this name to refer to the armature in ActionScript. You can change the name in the Property inspector.
Easing is adjusting the animation speed in the frames around each pose to create more realistic motion.
Note: These same ease types are available in the Motion Editor when you use motion tweens. You can view the curve of each type of ease in the Motion Editor when you select a motion tween in the Timeline.
The default Strength is 0, which is equivalent to no easing. The maximum value is 100, which applies the most significant easing effect to the frames preceding the pose frame. The minimum value is -100, which applies the most significant easing effect to the frames immediately after the preceding pose frame. When you finish, preview the eased motion on the Stage. Scrub the playhead in the Timeline between the two pose frames where you applied the ease.
Sign in to your account