I’m delving more into rigging these days, and I’m grappling with what I’m sure is a rigging 101 level issue.
I’'m working with a simple reverse foot set up, where the joints of the leg are separated form the foot hierarchy,and the leg’s IK handle parented under the foot hierarchy at the ankle.
This of course allows the foot to be moved too far off the end of the leg.
What is the usual method of keeping the foot from detaching like that?
You can set up a stretchy leg system so that the length of the leg scales when the foot moves too far away, or you can do a different kind of reverse foot.
I whipped up a super quick example of another setup, you can dig through it to see how it works, and you can definitely find tutorials for similar rigs online. The essential difference between this kind of reverse foot and the one with the actual joints running in a reversed direction through the foot is that in this case the joint chain is one continuous hierarchy, so the foot never leaves the ankle. It does some weird lifting as the foot control moves too far from the ankle, but that can be remedied with a stretchy leg system.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. You can go nuts with adding more and more groups for the foot ik handles - you end up with heel, ball, and toe roll, foot banking from side to side, toe, ball, or heel pivoting… you just keep layering. Really it comes down to what kind of behavior you want–both ik setups do the same thing, it’s just a matter of whether you’d like the foot to stay planted when the leg hyper-extends, or lift up.