Setting the neck to affect the body

00:03

If we animate the control itself, nothing happens.

00:07

The problem is the neck joint is constrained to the IK and FK skeletons.

00:13

So we can't constrain it to the control.

00:17

What we can do though is tell the net control to instead drive the IK and FK joints.

00:23

So they will then pass that movement onto the base skeleton for us.

00:29

OK. Let's find the joints,

00:31

neck FK

00:33

and neck IK.

00:36

You see there's nothing currently controlling these directly.

00:40

The attributes are clear which is good.

00:42

Let's open the node editor and wire these up, bring in the neck control

00:47

and the two neck joints

00:50

because we are only interested in the rotations.

00:53

We can simply use a direct connection.

00:56

So connect the neck controls, rotate attribute to the neck FK joints,

01:00

rotate attribute

01:03

and then repeat this connecting, rotate.

01:07

If we can find it

01:09

to the neck IK joints, rotate attribute,

01:13

we now have control over the neck.

01:17

If we switch to the FK spine,

01:19

the neck follows

01:21

and we still have control.