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I have seen numerous tutorials about rigging and animation of armatures. Whats bugs me is why everyone of it uses a extra bone as IK target and not something that is not related to the armature? like a spehre or other primitive mesh that is not part of the mesh?

Imagine the case where I don't want to render the animation in blender but want to export it then there would be two useless bones along with the Armature which are not used in animation anymore.

Just why use a extra bone why not animate with a seperate object or mesh for IK?

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  • $\begingroup$ so you can move them while in pose mode moving other bones? $\endgroup$
    – Chebhou
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 21:10

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The real reason is Bone targets positions can be stored in pose library. Also the scene is cleaner if everything is under armature.

But if you want to export the armature and another rig setup suits that better its ok. You can use anything you want for IK target.

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  • $\begingroup$ yup, forgot this $\endgroup$
    – Bithur
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 21:19
  • $\begingroup$ I also noticed that the major reason that I can Speculate is that blender lacks the ability to export armature animation independent of the IK target keyframes. As I couldn't export the only armature animation unless I included IK actions as well. It was a nighmare there were like 20 actions generated each of which corresponded to a bone and was garbage, I have no idea what happened there, but if i use bone as ik and make only armature keyframes then everything is nice $\endgroup$
    – user1062760
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 21:41
  • $\begingroup$ The pose library is a good argument! I'm giving you tick for that $\endgroup$
    – user1062760
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 21:42

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