Difficulty with joint setup for a skeleton

[COAndyMD7]

Hello, i'm having some difficulty with my joint setup. I want to use a forearm joint to control the rotation of an adjacent joint, and also be able to control the location of the wrist joint (rotating the wrist joint would move the upper pivot of the forearm joint & move the forearm accordingly). I was able to setup the joints for the forearm but rotating the wrist joint causes the lower forearm joint to move out of position (& wrist rotation doesn't modify the position of the upper forearm). Is this kind of setup possible? How could I go about doing this?

[tdHendrix]

Hi, I attached a file that might help you get the result you wanted.

For both bones (in my scene I used cylinders) I created a root and an end joint with each having an ik handle. Then I grouped the ik handles and centered the pivot. Then I connected the twist rotation (which is rotateZ in my scene) from the hand to the twist of the ik handle group. After that I parented each mesh under their respective bone.

[COAndyMD7]

Wow, thanks for the insight! Still struggling with rigging & this really helped me out. Using your example, I tried templating a full arm ik rig, but I am not sure if it is done correctly. If I key between fk to ik, the mesh moves (even though ik is parented). The ik handle seems to follow, but ends up sticking (without it being keyed). If you don't mind me asking, how can I fix this?

[tdHendrix]

No problem, I can take a look but the file you posted gives me an error when trying to open it. Can you try saving as a .ma file instead?

[COAndyMD7]

Thanks much, this one should work. Tried opening up the file and the rotation axis seemed messed up. So I just imported it into a new file, think that should fix things up. 

[tdHendrix]

Your scene was acting kinda weird so I just made a new one to show you an example. I tried to re-create what I think you were trying to do. Hope it helps!