Can I get a critique? Need some rig Help.

Tiny_Hut_Studios

Hey there! 

I have been working off the Maya Learning center and I have run into a bit of a problem, I am trying to set up the orient Locators for the shoulder/head sway however it asks to delete the parent constraint before orient constraining the locators and creating attributes for them. The only problem is once I delete the parent constraint the FK handle on the neck no longer moves the head with the neck. It keeps the neck in place and rotates it instead. Can someone help me with this problem?

 

Before I delete the constraint.



Afterwards when the constraint has been orientated. As you can see the FK in the neck no longer works. I also can not orient constrain AND parent constrain at the same time. If anyone can help me that would be great.  I added the file for anyone to mess with before I deleted the parent constrain if someone can take a look and tell me what I am doing wrong

WeatherMan

Parent constrain with only the translation, leaving the rotate channels open, then add your orient constraint.



Other things of note: you should always always always zero out your controls before you constraint (modify > freeze transformation). Your shoulder neck and head controls all have values in translate. Unfortunately you're fairly far along in your rig, so you might have to backtrack a bit

Lastly, try and take time to learn about offsetParentMatrix. It makes - at least in my fairly extensive testing - the whole technique of parenting/constraining an offset group all but obsolete. Groups are still fine for organization, but it helps keep the hierarchy much flatter, which makes for easier troubleshooting.

Tiny_Hut_Studios

WeatherMan said:

Parent constrain with only the translation, leaving the rotate channels open, then add your orient constraint.



Other things of note: you should always always always zero out your controls before you constraint (modify > freeze transformation). Your shoulder neck and head controls all have values in translate. Unfortunately you're fairly far along in your rig, so you might have to backtrack a bit

Lastly, try and take time to learn about offsetParentMatrix. It makes - at least in my fairly extensive testing - the whole technique of parenting/constraining an offset group all but obsolete. Groups are still fine for organization, but it helps keep the hierarchy much flatter, which makes for easier troubleshooting.

Thanks for that ill give it a shot! Still pretty new at making rigs that are more for than just simple posing so this has been a challenge, ill see if I can go in and fix this and thanks for the reference, ill take a look at that as well ::)

WeatherMan

Happy to answer any rigging questions you might have, by all means. It's a fun discipline, and in pretty high demand.