Unwanted Joint Rotation When Moving Foot Control (Video Included)

[kh19aah]

The left foot controls work fine but trying to rig the right side has somehow caused strange rotations in the joints when the controller is moved. Would anybody know the cause of this? I'm not sure if it has anything to do with me mirroring the controllers by duplicating then setting the X axis scale to -1 so it flips on the other side.

I'd like the foot to stay planted on the controller, I'm also a beginner at rigging. Any input is appreciated. 🙂

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

Even the controls are mirror-scaled, it likely is happening because of different joints axis orientations for left and right side. Just a guess, as it is impossible to tell 100% without seeing the rig itself. Post zipped MA if you want more input.

[stephenkmann · Accepted solution]

Looks like the "bad" ankles have double constraints on them, or bad matching constraint objects . 

 I would rebuild the constraints on those , and double check that the objects the joints are constrained to, match exactly to the joints rotations .  ( in rigging you rarely want to use "maintain offset" on your constraints, so it's possible that there is offset causing the issue. ) 

 hth

-=s

[kh19aah]

Thank you for the suggestions so far, here's the file for the rig to have a look at. 

In the meantime I will rebuild all the constraints as suggested by @stephenkmann and see if that fixes it.

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

There are several aspects that cause such behavior, main of which is joint orientation (local axis). You still can rig such skeleton, just set preferred angles for the elbow joints and update all IK handles.

For the Hand_CTRL  example.

• ParentConstrain with maintainOffset ON all three ik handles to the Hand_CTRL - HandIK, WristIK, ArmIK;
• Set preferredAngleY to -90 for the Elbow_jnt.

This should fix the loss in poleVector control, however the elbows will still go sideways in hand-raised-higher-than-elbow cases, therefore, I'd suggest parenting (or parentConstraining) the ElbowDirectionCTRLoffset group to the Hand_CTRL too, which can make limb positioning more quicker, as you will be able to aim hand and elbow with one controller, then adjust the elbow only if necessary, not always.

[stephenkmann · Accepted solution]

Now that I've seen how you are controlling the "wrist" 

 I think part of the issue is the  default values on those joints. ( and reversed X ) 

so a quick fix i did was to convert your SingleChain IK handle to a RotatePlane and give it a poleVectorConstraint to a locator. that I parented under the same parent as the IK handle

 call it a band aid fix. but it should work 

hth

-=s

[kh19aah]

So I'm pretty sure I've fixed the rotation problem now, I got rid of all constraints and mirrored controllers so it was clean on the problematic side. Then I duplicated the controller on the functional side (deleted all constraints so only the shape, offset and root group was left) and flipped its X scale to -1 again in the offset group so it mirrored over, then did the same to the shape itself, then rebuilt all the IKs and constraints. That seemed to fix it. 
Thank you for all the suggestions I will try them out as well to see if I can improve the rig.