IK bone orientation

Rmunday

So I am using the ART tools within Maya, working on a project that requires the use of the IK bones. So originally I thought just having the bones present was enough (As it was for previous projects) and let the engines code drive the bones.

However on this project the bones need to be constrained within Maya to the ankle and wrist controls so when I export the IK bones follow the respective part.

The position comes over fine however I find no matter how I constrain things within Maya the orientation just doesn't match which is obviously causing issues in engine.  Any help pointing me in the right direction would be awesome!

I have attached two images, one of the Foot control then the other of the IK bone I am wanting to match to the foot.

I have tried resetting the transforms of both the IK joint and the foot controller. I have tried parenting it using both regular parent constraints and separate point/orientate constraints! I have matched the local axis of each part so I am at a loss here.

Oh I have already done the animations for the character, I just need to get this issue sorted without ruining any of that.

Hito

tried constraining them to the respective export joints instead of controller objects? under character:root. find them in outliner or hypergraph. they are hidden by ART. if you want to unhide them you have to unhide the entire joint chain for them to be visible in vewport.

Rmunday

Oh I assumed you would have had to do that in the export file itself. I shall take a look thanks!

Edit: Well what do you know, simple as that. I am disgusted I didn't think of that sooner, as always @Hito you are a god send.

Edit 2: I lied, nothing but lies the IK joints still do not match the rotational values of the wrist/ankle joints. Dun dun duuun.

Hito

I don't think the rotations would matter that much, you just want the root space position for IK target joints, the rotation is set by raycast and surface normal of whatever the character is standing on.

doubt you'd ever be able to get them to match even if you wanted to since the joint translate and rotations are all parent space values.

Rmunday

I have thrown this by the coder in charge and he mentioned that only is the case for writing your own foot placement, the intention is to use the built in foot placement node in UE4. Using that the foot IK breaks the feet. I am so confused :')

Hito

I'm as confused as you are. Looking at the Paragon characters, their IK joints only match the skeleton in position, not rotation.

Rmunday

Guess I had better talk the coder around then, it seems there is some conflict of workflow here, thanks for taking the time to respond though!

Hito

do post what you find out. I'm intersted in the answers you get