orienting joint controls handles

[tamaboy311]

im riggin a character that was not made in T pose and my FK controls are not in T pose so my controls are angle but my handles are in world mode. i dont know how to explain exactly so i made a screenshot. please help!!!!!

a.jpg

[hobbles2]

Hey tamaboy311,

Orienting the controls in maya is tricky business so you'll have to outsmart maya with this simple trick i'm about to share.

First you'll have to unparent any children under your control. From there orient constrain the control to the joint (select the control first, then select the joint) with maintain offset OFF. This way, the control now inherits the joints orientation. And because you'll need the control to manipulate the joint, delete the orient constrain because we just used it to inherit the joints orientation, and if you keep it there it would cause some cycling errors.

Next step, duplicate your control. While you have your duplicated control selected, hit the down arrow key to select the duplicated controls shapeNode.

Delete that shape node. This should create an empty null with the same attributes (orientations included) as your original controller that you duplicated. From there, parent your control under the empty null (the duplicated control without a shape). It may be hard to select the empty null from the viewport, so you might want to keep your outliner open.

From there, freeze transforms your control. Make sure you don't freeze transform the empty null though. that's very important.


A note of caution:
If you choose to go with this method, and you want to parent your controls to each other, like the wrist FK control to the Elbow FK control, you'll want to parent the wrists null to the elbow control so it'll look something like this


NULL_Left_Elbow
CONTROL_Left_Elbow
NULL_Left_Wrist
CONTROL_Left_Wrist


Hope this helps

[tamaboy311]

awesome!!!!! but i did it different based in what u said. check it out:
1. took the control and duplicated.
2.deleted the shape and left the null on duplicated.
3. SELECTED THE BONE FIRST!! AND THEN THE NULL AND ORIENT CONSTRAIN!! and deleted the orient constrain.
4. parent the control to the null. select the control then the null hit P.
5. freeze trns. on the control and WALLA!!!!!!!