When constraining a group, is it normal for the constraint to be at world origin (X0, Y0, Z0)?

[cms9094]

I have a few controllers that are in groups. Before I placed them inside those groups, I made sure to delete history and freeze transforms once the controller is where I needed it. Then, I hit ctrl-g to create the group for the controller, and then I set the group pivot to the center of that controller. Is this the same thing as just typing in "group" in the MEL window? I was curious if just using ctrl-g and then snapping the pivot to center was causing this, vs typing group into the MEL window.

Is it just normal for the constraint to be at world origin when you constrain a group rather than at the center of the controller? Whenever I constrain an IK handle, for example, the constraint's pivot point is always at the center of the IK handle, not world origin.

I was also wondering if this was what has been causing my weird geometry snapping to the floor issue I've been experiencing during an undo...

EDIT: As you can see in the first screenshot, the group for the pole vector control is the white box, but the constraint on that group is world origin.

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

You were doing (not most effective, but still) right when snapping the group's pivot to the transform it is supposed to stick to and to host the control.

As for freezing transforms, you don't necessarily want those be frozen, as freezing resets the rotation too - the purpose of the group(null) is to zero out all the control's transforms. And, no, group command is not necessarily the same as Edit>Group, as the latter has options, which might differ from the default ones.

Here, check out this small snipped of MEL and see if it works for a single selected control.

// adds a null for the selected control
string $sel[] = `ls -sl` ;
$prn = `listRelatives -p $sel[0]`;
$nul = `group -em -name ("null_"+$sel[0]) -p $sel[0]`;
parent -a $nul $prn;
parent -a $sel[0] $nul;

As for constraint transforms/pivots, afaik, those doesn't matter much, leave them where those are. I've seen people collect all the constraints into one group, which just reduces the "readability" of the rig's structure.