Inverse Kinetics?

[Dov Sherman]

Suppose I want to do an effect with a moving arm with a bending elbow. Imagine that the shoulder is in a fixed position and the user can move the hand with the mouse. I want the upper arm and fore arm to move into whatever position is necessary to match the new position of the hand, rotating into position and bending the elbow to just exactly the right position to match the hand.

How would you go about doing this? I suspect it might be related to inverse kinetics but I don't know the algorithms for that. Can anyone explain this or recommend a good resource?

[annexion]

You could check out www.bit-101.com

Also, if you've been searching for the term, you'd come up dry because it's inverse kinematics.