Kinematic Chain Property Editor

Sets the chain effector's solution, rotation, and blending.

To display: Do any of the following:

Select any chain element and press Ctrl+R or choose Create Skeleton Inspect Chain Properties.

or
Select the first bone of a chain and press Enter.

or
In the explorer, click the Kinematic Chain icon in a chain's hierarchy.

IK Solver Behavior

For more information, see Choosing How an IK Chain Reaches Its Goal [ Character Animation ].

Solver	Selects the solver to use for the chain's IK. SI\|3D Solver maintains compatibility with chains imported from SOFTIMAGE\|3D but may not be able to solve effectively if the chain has both stiffness and rotation limits. XSI Solver provides quicker results, but both solvers generally give the same results.
Solver Angles	Sets the method of calculating joint rotations based on the preferred angle. Use Preferred Rotations from Joint Properties calculates rotation values based on the joints' preferred angles, so the joint rotations are always predictable. Use Joint Rotations changes the preferred angles if the joint angles are rotated manually. This is the same behavior as in SOFTIMAGE\|3D. Reuse Joint Rotations at Every Resolution Step ignores the preferred angles and calculates rotation values based on the joints' current angles. When the chain is extended to its full length, translating the effector toward the root will cause the chain to bend in one direction.
FK/IK Blend	Sets the blend weight between inverse kinematics (translation of the effector) and forward kinematics (rotation of the joint) on the selected chain. A value of 0 is 100% FK, while 1 is 100% IK (but still using the rotation on the bones as a preferred angle state). For more information, see Blending Between FK and IK Animation [ Character Animation ].
FK/IK Ghosting	Displays ghosts of the FK/IK values on chains when FK/IK Blend values are at 0 and 1. You must also activate Animation Ghosting and Skeleton FK/IK Ghosting in the view to see ghosting. You can set up the display on the Ghosting page in the Camera Display property editor.
Force IK	Triggers IK every time you modify the preferred angles from the Kinematic Joint property editor. This lets you immediately see the effect on the chain. For more information, see Forcing the Effector's Position [ Character Animation ].

Error Threshold

Lets you lower the error tolerance for the solver when there are problems with the effector jumping or "popping." This is most likely to happen on 3D chains that have many bones or that have stiffness or rotation limits set for them. Lowering the threshold means that less distortion is allowed to occur as it solves the chain's angles.

For more information, see Setting the Solver's Error Threshold [ Character Animation ].

Type

Select the type of error threshold to use: Solver Default or User Defined.

Threshold

If you select User Defined, you can enter a value for the threshold. The value is in Softimage units, meaning that a value of 1 is a tolerance of one grid square.

As the Threshold value gets lower, it takes longer for the chain to solve. In fact, if the value is too low, the solver may not reach a solution and the effector won't reach the IK goal.

Effector Rotation

For more information, see Setting and Blending the Effector's Orientation [ Character Animation ].

Affected By Last Bone	Toggles on/off the effector's dependency on the last bone. When on, the effector inherits the orientation of the last bone. When off, you can rotate the effector according to global coordinates.
Offsets	When Affected By Last Bone is selected, you can rotate the effector locally in X, Y, and Z with respect to the last bone.

Blend Effector Rotation Against Bone:

If Affected By Last Bone is selected, you can also select either of these options:

Link with FK/IK Blending

Blends the effector's orientation with the Blend FK/IK value (see above) to dictate how much of the "scene level" effector orientation is used relative to the rotation given by the last bone.

Inheritance Blend

Blends the effector's orientation as taken from the last bone (plus any offset) against any other orientation affecting the effector, such as an orientation constraint on the effector.

The default value is 1, which fully constrained to the last bone's orientation. A value of 0 (zero) is fully constrained to anything else affecting the effector's orientation, which has the same effect as if Affected by Last Bone was off.