Skeleton « Design « 3ds-Max Tutorials

Several different techniques exist for creating a controlled leg skeleton in Maya, and all of the best ones address the issue of animating the foot using two different pivot point locations - one at the heel, and one at the ball of the foot. However, all of the tutorials I have read on this subject tend to approach the basic construction of the leg in the same way; that is, the leg and foot are built as an entire chain, and IK handles and/or expressions are then added to provide appropriate control over the foot position and rotation. In my experience as a character animator, however, I have noticed that these approaches ignore a very critical feature of a good Leg Skeleton design; namely, the ability to lock the position of a foot and ensure that it won't move or float during the course of an animation. While other techniques do allow the artist to set keyframes for the location of IK handles which control the leg and foot, if these IK handles are positioned out of reach of the fully extended skeleton, slipping will certainly occur.