I don’t have access to 3dsMax right now to try your solution… but I’m not suggesting to always constrain the IK Goal to the nub bone. But in all the rigging tutorials I’ve seen, you create a shape object as a Control Object and either link or constrain the IK Goal to this shape Control Object (usually looks like a gyro gizmo)…
So when you are animating your Control Object, you can pull it away from the end of the bone chain (and the IK follows along…) and when you let go of manipulating the Control Object– your Control Object (and thus your IK Goal) remain dislocated away from the nub bone.
It would be nice (to me at least) if when you release the Control Object, and if it is displaced away from the chain’s nub bone… that it would automatically snap back to nub bone (taking the IK Goal with it).
If you were directly animating the IK Goal and displace it away from the nub bone… it has an option to automatically snap back to nub bone when you click it again (for next manipulation I suppose)– however, when you constrain the IK Goal to a shape Control Object… you lose this feature– further, it seems most people dislike directly animating the IK Goal. So it would be nice if the shape Control Object governing the IK Goal would have this automatic snap back feature.
who told you that? that happens only in the tutorials what you talking about.
in many situations you can’t stick ik control (or control that controls ik control) at the end of a chain. if you move a character pelvis the feet ik controls have stay where they are.
Yes I know that… I’m talking about when you are manipulating a specific limb itself… not, for example, when you pull the whole body away– in which case the hands and feet would stick to their controls until you pull the body too far away.