Animating on a knee

PeteHawk

I've always avoided trying to animate a character that lands, pivots or climbs using the knees. But I now need to know how you guys do it.
So for instance lets say we have a character death, he lands onto his knees then onto his front. Using IK or FK what would you guys do?

I've just grabbed an image from google to illustrate my example:

Kaeloth

You need a "lock" on your rig, on Morpheus rig you have a "Lock mid" on the IK, when activated and constrained, you can't move the elbows or knees, this is how you can do something like you want ! Without this on your rig ? .......... Well, good luck ! ^^

slipsius

Personally, I think the IK locks can look kind of robotic and not very natural. I`d more likely just eyeball it. Possibly attach a locator to my knee and put one on the ground as well, then just keep them lined up best i can in my posing. Some shift is natural, so it's not a huge deal if they move a bit. But, that at least lets you move your characters body around while keeping the knees in the same area/ same height from the ground.

If you have a lock, I guess you could just lock it, then animate on a layer overtop of it to give it the natural shift you need.

heboltz3

Same with Slip. I usually just throw it in FK, match the feet and eyeball it.

If I was looking to do something more advance, I would probably try to fudge something with a locator if I didn't already have that level of control.

Denny

I'm the same as above, but use IK as I prefer it sliding around less. It works more than enough, a lot of time is spent blocking out the poses anyway.

PeteHawk

Thanks guys, I did it by eye just frame-by-frame for the duration of the pose. Using IK as Denny said, not sure I could get better results using FK. I ended up using it twice in the same shot (dude climbing a ledge using his knee and elbow), worked a treat.

I've yet to see rigs with Locks, clearly I've been blind to them. Cheers guys!