Global transform values of joint in hierarchy in Maya 2018?

[Anonymous]

Hi all

I'm wondering if anybody knows a way of continuously seeing global transform values (specifically translate values) on a child joint in a hierarchy in Maya 2018?

Kind regards
Fredrik 

[gautham.chandran47]

I'm afraid not. In maya they calculate the parent first and then the child. As long as the joint is connected to its parent joint directly, it won't show the child joint's value in world space.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thank you gautham.chandran47 for confirming my suspicion! 

My issue was that Maya auto oriented the parent joints and merged all translation offsets into one relative axis. Which means that different child joint positions could end up having the same relative offset value… a nightmare if I wanted to give joint placement instructions to students by simply giving translation values. I found a way around the problem by activating "Orient Joint to World" in the Joint tool-settings. The Child joints still have a relative value, but it least it's more predictable in regards to the values in the Channel box-window. 

[gautham.chandran47 · Accepted solution]

If you wanna give each joint position, tell them to create and position joints first and then parent. When I was a student, my teacher taught me like that. He told me to create individual joints and place them in the right position. And parent one by one and re-orient them if needed.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

It's good advice, and I thought of that as well. But as it is their first assignment in rigging, I need to minimize the amount of steps in order to write shorter instructions and reduce the possibility of misstakes. But thank you again gautham.chandran47 for your input.