Parenting joints to controls problem
 

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone knows why when I try and parent joints to controls (usually just circular curves or cubes) the bone disappears and I just have the actual ball joint part left, which is no use as it is no longer part of the skeleton, thanks in advance for any help.
chris

Hello,

you need to use parent constrain (Constrain > Parent)rather than physically parenting the controller to the joint.

Select the controller forst and then the joint, hit parent constrain ande you'l be sorted.

The reason for this is that in a joint chain each joint is physically parented to the next one, you can see this in the outliner. While an object can be the parent to many child objects, a child object can only have one parent. Constrining works differently so it doesn't intefere with the layout inside the outliner.

Hope that helps,

Mat.

heh.
There's a couple of possible reasons for this.
It IS possible to parent joints to control curves inside of skeletons (just in case you were wondering). In fact, depending on what you want to do, it may be necessary.
But anyways, the reasons -
1) is the control curve inside of the skeleton? I'm doubting this is your actual problem, but it never hurts to check.
2) when doing this sort of trick, the parenting must be in the format of joint-curve-joint, and without anything between. In other words, you couldn't parent a joint to a curve, stick that curve inside another one, then stick them into the root joint (or joint-curve-curve-joint). The curve must be a first-level child of the first joint, and the joint that is parented must also be a first-level child.

Those are the two most likely probelms (and the ones I've run across).
That help?

fanks for v speedy replies happymatt and xander, thats exactly v help i was after!!!
many many many fanks again and shall see you aronud he forums!!:attn:

Ahh! now I have run into another problem, i wud like use v curves (in my case just circles) to rotate each part of the spine, however when I did what Happymatt suggested it can be used to move the join, but not rotate. If yourt familiar with the IK Joe(v3) rig, you'll see how I would like to rig a spine. Any ideas coz I would really like to give this a go. Thanks in advance (again lol)
Chris

it might be because youve applied a IK spline to control the spine and therefore the joints are linked via the IK spline, thus not allowing you to rotate the joints (as they are controled by the IK handle)

What I think you mighe be needing is a FK spine, or a FK/IK swither, if you look on google theres lots of tutorial for creating FK/IK blends ( you basically change a setting in the IK handle tool that allows you to go between FK/IK, the most common example is in the arms of a character.)

Hope it helps, if you've not aplied a IK handle to the spine then i'm a but stumped, unless youve locked out the rotations??

hey there,

I apologise, I should have said orient constrain. With all the talk of parenting I suggested the wrong constraint, oops!

Later,

Mat.

When I use orient constrain they joint flips on its side so that its lying parallel with the curve, which is not really what I am after. What I am really after is to have the spine and each joint of it can be rotated by grabbing the curve, but when I try this like I say it either flips on its side, or sometimes just spins really really fast when I move the rotation too just a tiny bit. I am confused lol!

Plz send wise words this way!!

Cheers
Chris

Have you deleted all the transforms and history's off the curve prior to constraining as this causes problems like you mentioned.

Also my might need to line up the axies of the curve to the axies of the joint to stop the moveing when you add the constriant.

gud idea gster, shall give it a go and post back, i do love the forums lol!
cheers
chris

Also make sure that maintain offset is selected in the constraint attributes.

what shoud i do
 

does this makes me have more points for download a video??

I had the same problem and went to this page/site to get advice. But then I went back to maya interface and found out how to solve this problem, the solution is not to rotate it immediately after setting the constraint but to unclick the curve first and then click it again and rotate it. Should work fine now. :)

though i had the problem with the arms and not the spine. but i hope this helps anyway.