There rare plenty of ways to avoid the unwanted and jarring snapping actin that shows up when pushing an IK joint chain too far in Maya, but here, Nick Miller demonstrates his Soft IK Tool that can help soften the movement.
This is a rigging tool that helps eliminate “snapping” IK joint chains when animating
Nick notes that this is a similar set up that was inspired and transposed from Andy Nicholas, who created a similar solution in Softimage. Nick’s Soft IK Tool creates a panel that builds the Soft IK system, and also provides a new Soft IK value into the channel box that you can use to control the effect of the Soft IK when animating. Nick has made the script available here: Soft IK Tool for Maya.
