develop | LW_IK Vs. IKB - A Comparitive Analysis

Posted on May 4th, 2006 by Colin

Or twenty-one reasons to switch to IK Boost…

  1. IK Boost does not pop
    In fact, due to the way it works, IK Boost cannot pop.
  2. IK Boost allows fully straightened limbs
    LW_IK requires pre-bent limbs limited to a minimum of 8 degrees bend in order to achieve stability and prevent popping.
  3. IK Boost allows broken joints (‘dos equis’ as Richard Williams called it)
    See Point 2.
  4. IK Boost is part-time IK
    The benefits of this are many! It doesn’t need to be constantly solving the IK, therefore giving you much better performance during posing, playback and rendering. This will also allow many many more characters per scene. It also allows much easier communication with other plugins.
  5. IK Boost works equally well with long and short IK chains
    LW_IK wasn’t too predictable with more than 2 Bones in a chain, 3 Bones if you added loads of locks and limits.
  6. IK Boost does NOT require reliance on ‘2D IK’
    See Point 5 - It just works! :) This allows you rig by instinct - not by trial and error.
  7. IK Boost RIGs can be edited at any time without destroying your animation unduly
    This is thanks to the part-time IK solutions, the rotations of Bones are recorded exactly as they would be with an FK rig.
  8. IK Boost Controllers can be edited at ANY time
    In fact, this is the whole philosophy of how it should work.
  9. IK Boost is not restricted to Bones
    It can be applied to Objects, Bones, Camers, Nulls and Lights; provided the top item in the hierarchy is a Null or an Object.
  10. IK Boost does not require external items such as Goal Nulls
    This has many huge advatages too. First of all it makes rigging much easier to understand and get working straight away. Secondly, it allows swapping and sharing of RIGs very easily. See Point 11.
  11. IK Boost allows sharing and swapping of RIGs
    This means you can build up a library of motions and poses for one core rig. Rigs, motions and poses for any type of beast can shared/brokered with other users. Character specific macros recorded with LS_Commander will remain valid on other characters, without needing a degree in programming.
  12. IK Boost is forgiving
    Imperfect rigs will still work, and can be edited / improved as you work, allowing new users to get started quickly and grow with their rigs.
  13. IK Boost is easy to use, easy to learn and above all FUN!
    OK, that’s totally subjective, sorry, won’t do it again! :)
  14. IK Boost in 100% stable (application-wise)
    I’m not kidding, I’ve never had a crash with it - plenty when using the scene editor/graph editor/ortho tools at the same time, but none when working with IK Boost alone.
  15. IK Boost allows Simultaneous IK and FK control
    Of course it does, that’s just the 1st basic of its operation.
  16. IK Boost gives bi-directional IK
    IK Stop at the Hip and move the toe OR IK Stop at the toe and move the Hip - it’s all the same to IK Boost.
  17. IK Boost is a FULL-BODY IK system (when and only when you want and need it to be)
    Fix a toe, move the hand and the whole shoulders, spine, hips and legs follow naturally OR fix the shoulder, move the hand and only the arm follows.
  18. IK_Boost has Quaternion solving
    …nice.
  19. IK Boost has it’s own undo list seperate from Layout’s undo list
    Giving you more flexibility and control.
  20. IK Boost needs your love
    C’mon with a silly name like that it would have been better off being called ‘Sue’
  21. IK Boost rigs dont get animated
    They just get posed, this workflow is much closer to to traditional animation.

OK that’s enough for now, don’t think that I’ll be shying away from criticising IK Boost’s weak points too, but that’s for another day and will be filed under ‘feature-requests’ :)