Before you can pose your character with full body IK, you first need to characterize it. When you characterize a character, a full body IK system is created. The full body IK system includes: the hikSolver, hikHandle, and a set of FBIK effectors. The hikSolver controls the FBIK solution, the hikHandle drives the joints and bones in your character’s skeleton, and the FBIK effectors let you pose your character’s limbs.

To characterize your character

1. Select the root joint of your character’s skeleton.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Select Skeleton > Full Body IK > Add Full Body IK.
   • In the Script Editor or Command Line type characterize; and then press on the number pad of your keyboard.

A set of FBIK effectors for your character appears in the scene view. These effectors are manipulators that you can transform and key to pose and animate your characters with full body IK in Maya.

Each FBIK effector is positioned over the joint it drives. FBIK effectors appear as spheres around your character’s joints. By default, your character’s wrist (LeftHandEff/RightHandEff) effectors are pinned in translation, and their ankle (LeftFootEff/RightFootEff) effectors are pinned in translation and rotation. See Pin and unpin your character’s effectors.

To change the size of a FBIK effector, select the effector and in the Attribute Editor set its Radius attribute located in the HIK Effector Attributes section of its JointNameEff tab.