Maya - Parented joints don't rotate?

#1

Hey there,

I’ve created a humanoid rig and set up IK handles for the arms and legs. To do this, I had to set parent constraints to the shoulder joints. But after doing so, they don’t rotate around the character anymore when I rotate the character’s spine. The shoulder joints are just stuck in place and I need to manually move them.

Is there a way to get them to rotate around the character along with the spine joints again, without having to remove my IK handles? I need those for animation. Use the connection editor or contraints?

I’ve used other people’s rigs before, and the arms were set to IK handles while still rotating/moving along with the spine – keeping the distance between the neck and shoulder joints in place – so I’m sure it’s possible, but how? >_<

Screenshot

Thanks!

#2

Hey man; You shouldn’t need to parent constrain shoulder joints to get a standard hand/foot chain working. What did you constrain them to?

Unless you are trying something fancy, then the only constraint you would need on the shoulder/elbow/hand joint chain would be an orient constraint on the hand joint; typically to a controller which is parent constrained to the IK handle. The shoulder should just move with the chain as normal.

#3

Really? I followed a tutorial. What I did was:

  • Create an IK handle from the shoulder to the hand.
  • Create 3 NURBS circles: shoulder, elbow and hand.
  • Parent the shoulder circle to the shoulder joint. (This stops the shoulders from moving along when I rotate the spine)
  • Create an Orient constraint between the hand circle and the hand joint.
  • Create a pole vector with the elbow joint.

Did I do something wrong here?

#4

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