Hi Thomas de Groot, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Oh, by the way, Lutz,
> What does the 'dampen' really do? I have never well understood its
> function....
IK works in such a fashion that it starts at the selected object and
looks at the parents until it's at the top. At each parent, it looks
which axis (rotation or translation) are available and sets the value
in such a way that the selected object comes as close to where it
should go as possible. This is repeated all the way to the top and
then it's repeated until the selected object is within a certain
distance to the target
(View|Configuration|Advanced|MaxTargetDeviation) or this has been
repeated the maximum number of times
(View|Configuration|Advanced|MaxIterations).

At each step, after Moray has calculated the optimal change in
rotation or translation, it limits this movement to the value in the
dampen field. So, take your arm as an example. Say that to get your
fingertip to a specific point, you could turn your wrist up by 60
degrees. This would mean that the elbow would harldy move and the
shoulder not at all. If dampen is set to, say 10 degrees in each
joint, the wrist will only be rotated 10. Then the elbow will be
rotated at most 10 and the should also. This is repeated until the
target point is reached.

The effect a lower dampen value has is to make the movement 'softer',
i.e. to rather propagate the movement up the IK chain than to make
extreme movements at the bottom of the chain.

Clear as mud, eh? Questions?

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

Post a reply to this message