Hand and feet tracking for responsive contact

[Sid Edwards]

I’d like to understand how to make animation more realistic by having hands automatically press against surfaces they touch, and feet automatically detect and orient on top of steps and rugged terrain.

How do you rig or physics-ify a rig so that hands and feet automatically touch and orient towards surfaces you move them? Is there a video for this already? 

[Martin Bergwerf]

Usually that is animated ‘by hand’.

[Omar Domenech]

There is no video of this sadly. If you figure it out let us know, most likely CG Cookie will hire you for recording training. 

[Sid Edwards]

Well, my thought was perpendicular camera tracking of sorts. Each inverse kinematic bone of each finger has a ray that shoots downward and positions itself. You then use a driver to make it responsive for when the ray both intersects a desired surface, and, is within a certain radius. So actually, maybe just a spherical empty with a driver would do?

Otherwise, maybe if you animate the “child of” constraint’s weight, that might do it too.

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