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Control curves rotation axis coinciding with joint rotation

6 REPLIES 6
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Message 1 of 7
Anonymous
3780 Views, 6 Replies

Control curves rotation axis coinciding with joint rotation

Hi there,
I don't know if anyone else has had this problem - but it is confounding us. When setting up a simple FK control curve on say the wrist for example, many times the control curve isn't exactly perpendicular to the local rotation axis of the joint movement, so when we position the control curve to be perpendicular to the joint - it has a rotational value added, but the rotational handles are lines up with the rotational handles of the joint that we want to move.

Freeze Transformations: then the control curves rotational handle go back to being skewed (out of alignment with the joints)

We want to Freeze transformations before constraining the curve, but we'd really to keep those rotations control handles to remain aligned with the joints rotational handles. This will make it an exact control when animating - grab the rotational handle of the curve, rotate it, and the joint will move exactly in the proper direction.

Any ideas about how to get the rotational handle of any control curve to run perpendicular to the shape after freezing transformations?
6 REPLIES 6
Message 2 of 7
s_ehrenhaus
in reply to: Anonymous

Hello,
I had to take care of something similar to your issue.

For rigging the "phalanx" bones of dragon wings I wanted to have a master control for all the phalanx bones. But also a single control for every bone, they should follow along with the master control and the bones. Well I solved the issue by creating a group, orienting it to align with the bones rotation and parenting the controlcurve to that group. That way the controlcurve can have 0 at rotation value but still move along a custom rotation axis (the bones one).
You may need to consider the rotation order of your control curve and bone. I had some problems where rotating the controlcurve made the bone flip around in an unexpected way. I fixed that by changing the rotate order of the bone and the curve to yzx (could be different in your case)
Here a little video of that rig im talking about so you can see what I mean ) at 8:25 I show some of the wing features)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhKGoIrCjmA
Be Happy 🙂
Message 3 of 7
Anonymous
in reply to: s_ehrenhaus

Thank you so much. We stumbled upon a similar solution about 5 minutes ago!
Message 4 of 7
halfstone
in reply to: Anonymous

Here's another thought -
When you create the control curves, leave them at the origin; don't move them or rotate them - this way you don't have to freeze the transformations.

To get them into position, use Point Constrain and Orient Constrain - constrain the control curves to the joint. Once they're snapped into place, you know that the rotation axes of the curves are exactly the same as the rotation axes of the joints - but the curves aren't positioned the way you want them to be visually, for use in animating yet.

Delete the constraints, and now orient constrain the wrist joint to the curve as you normally would.

To position the curve properly, go into component mode and select all the vertices of the curve and rotate them into the correct position. When you rotate the components, the rotation axes of the original remain unaffected.

Then you can parent the curve to the joint above in the hierarchy, i.e., the elbow.
Message 5 of 7
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

The way I do it is I create a group above my control called "Ctrl_ORIENT". That orient control gets moved to the proper joint position and also takes the aim constraint we use to align the Local Rotation Axis of the anim control. That way all you have to do is rotate the control in component mode to make it perpendicular to the joint's X axis (hold down J to snap to increments). Your control's LRA should now be properly aligned and still be completely zeroed out because those values are being held by the ORIENT group.

 

Hope this helps! 

 

-Ben

Message 6 of 7
kimliboro
in reply to: Anonymous

I'm coming across a lot of complicated steps online... Here's how I did it.

 

Maya 2016:

1. Create your to-be control curve.

2. Position curve on desired joint, oriented the way you like.

3. Freeze transform > option box > Uncheck "orientation", so Maya will freeze ONLY the curve's "translate" and "scale" values.

4. When applying the orient constraint > option box > Check "maintain offset".

Message 7 of 7
kimliboro
in reply to: kimliboro

Never mind, guys. I realize when you do this, you can't zero out the rotations to get to neutral pose.

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