all right so let's take a look at space
switching space switching is meant to be
a replacement for having to manage
constraints uh as we know dealing with
constraints can be a bit of a pain
because you'll constrain uh say your I
hand to something and now you can't set
keys on your hand because the
constraints active and so having to deal
with that can be a pain for some
animators so space switching is um it is
an advanced feature it can get very
complicated but it's as complicated as
you want it to be so by default uh
almost all the ik controls come
with um some sort of space switching
capability so by right clicking on the
wrist for example we can go down space
switching and set the wrist to be in
body space World space head space for
whatever you want um so let's go ahead
and I'm going to go ahead and select all
controls I want to make sure I clear off
any keys I may have cuz I have a
few and if I go forward a few
frames
okay so you can see that my right wrist
has been set to body
space um to change that I can just go
and click on either world or
default now it's going to behave like
we'd expect
now that those key frames got Set uh on
the control itself so all the matching
happens on the control the space
switching however happens on a node so
if you wanted to access the curves for
what space you're currently in here's
how to do it go ahead and open up the
space switching interface here you'll be
presented with a list of all the
controls that have space switching on
them capabilities by default so let's go
ahead and click on the ik wrist R ANM
and you want click on this button here
that will give you your animation
settings your key frames for what spaces
you're in so we can go ahead and we can
actually delete all
those let just break connections on
those so now that we are always in
default space if all these are set to
zero we're in default
space we'll go over this UI a little bit
more in a bit
um so here's what you can do with space
switching let's say um I I want to
create a
cube and this is going to be uh my
little horse or something that my dude's
going to ride
on
okay and what I want to
do let's just get them posed up real
quick kind of sort
of bring It his knee
out this is uh we'll go over this uh
feature in the pose video but I'll use
it here since it will be fast uh if you
right click on the pose editor you can
copy and then paste opposite so we can
actually just quickly mirror our uh pose
over to the other
side and I am going to let's see let's
grab the uh ik control for the hand this
will be grabing onto like the little the
RS or whatever they're called and then
the ik control for the right hand we
will put
on his uh his leg and let's go ahead and
move the hip
out this is beautiful posing all right
so we've got something set up so now
that we can create a few spaces so I'm
open up my space switcher UI and I can
click on create space this going to ask
for our control and the target space so
let me click on our body atom and our
Target space will be this Cube create a
space for my
hand I actually want my space to be in
this case I could either switch the legs
to be in FK which should actually be uh
probably the smarter thing to do so I
can choose my
thigh go ahead and create that
space and then this
hand will'll just make it a child of the
cube as well so create space so we've
created a few spaces now these will show
up in our right click menus they'll also
show up in here if you want to use this
instead so
pq1 and for the ik chest let's see for
the head I'm going to change it to world
it's already on world and for the ik
chess I'm going to change it to chest ik
World
aligned this is like World space except
when I rotate my body you'll notice that
it moves but it stays oriented to the
world all right so what did all that do
for us now if we set our space switching
here to our
thigh here to our
Cube and here to our
Cube and we animate this Cube let's go
ahead and uh switch our left left leg to
BFK as well we animate our Cube now
we've got our guy automatically
following along we still have full
access to all the controls so we can
actually still fully animate this guy as
we need to and as we do things like
animate the Bob of the leg the arm is
going to be animating
automatically um as we do things like
this you'll notice that his his chest
because we have it set to World aligned
is going to be countering so that he can
try to stay balanced so that's some of
the stuff that space switching can do
for you and like I said you can make
this as complicated and as crazy as you
want or you can just keep keep it simple
and just use some of the basic spaces we
have here this is a little bit more of
an advanced setup because we've got a
lot of things that are writing um that
are dependent on each other if you ever
want to see what all of your spaces are
looking like you can go ahead and select
the top button here for the curve and
this will select all your space switch
nodes so you can go into your graph
editor and actually see where your keys
are and what they're set to um if you
wanted to delete all your spaces quickly
you could do that here as well that will
get them all back back to
default um let's go over the uh little
cake icon
here uh this is for baking so you can
actually take let's say you've done an
animation like this and you've got all
this complex space switching going on
where you've um not only have you put
controls in spaces but over time you
switch them to other spaces and it's
just getting confusing to to manage but
you're pretty happy with the animation
now you just want to polish you can go
ahead and you can bake all that data
down to your control so that your
control is now just in default
space but um it's still retained all
that motion that you got from all that
space switching so to bake you just
select which controls you want to bake
and then you hit the bake button up top
and that's all it
takes as far as these other buttons here
um this is matched which means that when
I switch spaces I want my control not to
move by default this is turned on or a
little flame icon and whether or not you
want it to go to the control which is by
default which I highly recommend as the
node is a bit more of a advanced thing
um and I found that animators tend to
like it on the control the uh what I
mean by this is when you match so let's
um click on this guy and if we go to the
graph editor what you'll see is you'll
actually see two key frames here
the first key frame is on frame negative
1 and it it's the bookmark so basically
it bookmarked where the hand was before
the match before the switch and then it
goes to the frame of the switch and it
switches and matches values in this case
there were no actual changes
here but sometimes depending on how
crazy your space switch is you'll you'll
see a big jumping curves
um I my assumption was that animators
would like to keep their curves but I
found that a lot of them prefer to work
with jumps and the curves and have all
that information right here rather than
having to go to a separate node to
access that information uh that separate
node I'm referring to is of course this
guy right here so you just select the
curve and the matching information could
go either to the control or to this node
it's your choice by default it's set to
control so that's pretty much it for
space switching like I said um it's
definitely when I deleted some stuff
there it's meant to be as uh easy to use
as you'd like but also can be as robust
to use as you want as well so thank you