inverse kinematics

Hi hoping to get some help on the ik tool.

i have a very simple stick man 2D puppet which i created to teach myself animate pro, but when trying to add the ik skeleton the arms and legs move fine but the body and head only rotate around the pivot point.
they wont move up or down at all and thats what i need them to do.
i have followed the kick-start tutorials to the letter and any other advice would be very much appreiciated
thanks

First of all, are you using Animate Pro 1 or Animate Pro 2?

Also, whenever asking a question that relates to hierarchy, it’s really helpful if you include a screenshot of the timeline and/or the network view so that we can get a sense of what’s going on. Just upload your screenshot to a free site like photobucket then post the link here.

From your description, what I’d guess is that you probably haven’t enabled the option in the tool properties of the IK tool for “enable translation if top of hierarchy”. You also need to enable the option All-Chain mode if you want the character to move, not just rotate in place.

However I want to point out that the way that the IK tool works is that you set up the pivot points for all of the drawings. Then, you create a hierarchy. When you create the hierarchy, it automatically connects those pivot points together to create the bone system. Now because of the way that IK works, the drawing layers can only rotate. Meaning, that with the IK tool, you cannot translate an individual drawing layer up or down with relation to other drawing layers. The reason for this is that if you did this, it would change the relative position of the pivot points, and your bone would change length.

So if you’re trying to move drawing layers up and down with respect to each other then you need to use the Transform tool, not the IK tool.

Does this help at all? If not, then please include a screenshot and a further description of the problem.

~Lilly