Maya - Parented joints don't rotate?

twinmatrix

Hey there,

I've created a humanoid rig and set up IK handles for the arms and legs. To do this, I had to set parent constraints to the shoulder joints. But after doing so, they don't rotate around the character anymore when I rotate the character's spine. The shoulder joints are just stuck in place and I need to manually move them.

Is there a way to get them to rotate around the character along with the spine joints again, without having to remove my IK handles? I need those for animation. Use the connection editor or contraints?

I've used other people's rigs before, and the arms were set to IK handles while still rotating/moving along with the spine -- keeping the distance between the neck and shoulder joints in place -- so I'm sure it's possible, but how?

Screenshot

Thanks!

Bartalon

You should set the shoulder controllers as children to the spine controller. This will allow for the shoulder controllers to inherit the transformations (rotation) of the parent spine controller and still keep the Parent Constraint from the shoulder controller to the IK.

twinmatrix

Thanks for your reply! ^^ That sounds logical. I'm a Maya rookie, though -- could you please explain how to "set the shoulder controllers as children to the spine controller"? By grouping the shoulder NURBS curves (I created these as controllers for the joints) under the NURBS curve that moves to the spine/neck joint or..? ^_^;

Bartalon

If you open your Outliner or Hypergraph: Hierarchy under the Window menu (personally I think the Outliner is easier to read), you can MMB drag an object onto another: this will set the object you drag as a child to the object you dragged it to. The parenting is indicated by indentation and a line from the parent to the child node (in the Outliner/Hypergraph).

twinmatrix

Wow, thank you so much! I knew about the Outliner, but didn't think it would solve this issue -- I figured the rig would do this automatically or something, ha. Immediately moved all the controllers in a proper hierarchy and it works perfectly now, thanks!