I am trying to bake a simple animation made with a Rigify Human rig. My rig is a humanoid mesh (the Unreal Engine mannequin but configured for use with Rigify). I have placed a "child of" constraint on the left IK hand, parented to the right IK hand so that they move in sync w/ the tool or weapon that the human mesh is "holding". A screenshot of the configuration with the right hand selected in pose mode:
A gif image of it playing to demonstrate the (very simple) animation: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ye8Vv.jpg It's not particularly pretty but this my first time attempting this. The animation works as I expect. I have only placed a keyframe on the right IK hand for now, and the left IK hand follows along.
How the constraint is set up:
Now I would like to bake the action that I have created so that I get an animation with a pose on every frame that respects the constraint without actually having the constraint in place. Following guides I have seen online, I do this by selecting my animation in the dope sheet, selecting the armature in object mode and doing: Object -> Animation -> Bake Animation.
I have tried many combinations of the following options in that tool:
- Visual keying
- Clear constraints
- Clear parents
No configuration behaves as I expect - namely that the left and right hands should keep the same poses they had before, but the constraint is removed. Instead, the left hand goes back to the rest pose and follows the animation from that starting point. The right hand adopts another incorrect pose. Screenshot of the pose of the baked animation on the first frame (this is with the option to enable visual keying, but other options turned off):
Perhaps I am misunderstanding what this tool does? Or maybe baking the rigify rig is the wrong course to take? Should I create a separate skeleton, constrain all its bones to match the rigify rig, and then bake that instead? I'm a little unclear on what best practice typically is when doing this sort of work.
Thanks in advance for any assistance. Let me know if any additional details would be helpful. I have attached the blend file here (pre-bake) if you would like to take a look.