I’ve been playing with simple IK armatures in Toon Boom Animate Pro and I’m trying to wrap my head around a specific feature in the tools properties panel when IK is selected. It’s the Enable Translation if Tope of Hierarchy button. This tells me if I select the root (parent) bone, the top of the armature, and select this Enable Translation button, the root bone will move freely across the stage. But it does nothing - it is still stuck in its original position. The only thing I can do is rotate it with the IK tool. I can move it if I select the entire armature with the Selection tool - but what does the Enable Translation tool do?
The way the IK works is that it tries to make your character (or limb) move by using only the rotation of all the pegs concerned. Now this is fine when moving a hand at the end of an arm in 3 parts (arm, forarm and hand). But when trying to move a whole character where you locked the foot on the ground and try to move the hip to the side, to achieve this with just rotation of the pegs is almost impossible in most rigs. So to help with this you have to allow the top peg of the armature or rig to move (translation) in X and Y also, not just with rotation.
So, in a typical rig that is in hierachy the master peg of the character, usually the parent to the hip peg would be set to allow Translation also.
It should do what you describe. However, one thing that I notice from your description is that you’re describing it as a button, but it’s actually a mode.
What I mean by that is, you have to “enable” this mode by clicking on the button. But you don’t have to click on the button every time you select the root node. You only have to click on the button once, to enable the mode. Then ever time there on, it will allow you to move the root node.
What I’m thinking is that you may have clicked it more than once, so you may have turned it on, and then turned it back off again.
If that doesn’t help, then contact support@toonboom.com for further assistance.
~Lilly