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wasbubs
06-03-2008, 12:07 AM
I’m not a great rigger by any means but I’ve got a problem with a simple rig that I’ve made.

I have a biped character with a bone for the forearm so that I can rotate the forearm without rotating the elbow. the bone by itself rotates perfectly but I wan to add a nurbs circle or other “control” so that I can easily grab it and animate it.

every time I try to constrain parent it messes up the rotate… as it should since its taking the orientation from the parent which is the nurbs circle.

so How would I “parent” the bone to the circle and maintain the original rotation of the bone? I use the word parent because I don’t know of another word to describe what I’m asking.

any ideas? using maya2008 if that helps anyone…
Boucha
06-03-2008, 05:32 AM
maybe you are running into a loop problem..try checking out ur constraints and parenting stuffs in a hierarchal manner...

Also there is a quick and easy way to manipulate joints...

type this in script editor and execute...

parent -add -shape pSphereShape1 joint1;

note: -shape = name of the controller's shape node e.g. pSphereShape1


now the shape of the controller is the shape of the joint so if u select it u select joint1...
wasbubs
06-03-2008, 06:16 PM
sweet that works. thanks man!

2 quick questions though. #2 is general and has nothing to do with 3d in practice

1) is there a way to do this without mel? It seems like it should be able to be done.

2) was cgtalk down yesterday? (June 2, 2008) I was in the lab at school most of the day and had this problem but couldn't get on. I got a server timeout or some other error that wouldn't bring me to cgtalk or cgsociety. So I just wanted to know if it was down or my school has it blocked for some reason or by accident.
Dichotomy
06-04-2008, 12:19 AM
if I'm understanding it correctly, the problem is in the connection between the "control" and the joint.
If you turn on "maintain offset" in the constraint options, it should help that. I do find that sometimes "maintain offset" will screw with some blend setups and the likes, so what I do is:

1. Duplicate the control you want.
2. Delete the duplicated control's shapeNode, leaving you with an empty transform node in the same location and pivot as your control.
3. Orient constrain the joint (master) to transformNode (slave), keeping maintain offset off.
- this orients the transform's rotation to that of the joint.
4. Delete the constraint off the transformNode (leaves the rotation values there, but unlinked)
5. Orient constrain the transformNode (master) to the joint (slave)
- the joint shouldn't move because the transformNode has been oriented to it.
6. Parent the transformNode under the control.

It might look like a lot, but its really simple and works quite well.
hope it helps.
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