Constrained Joints Add Unwanted Rotation

[garion-1]

Hello,

I'm working on a character where I am trying to rig the collar bone to a shoulder control handle. When I orient constrain the left collar bone to the shoulder control handle, everything is fine. When I try to do the same technique to the right collar bone, it rotates into a bad angle. I then zero out the rotation, move the shoulder control handle again, and it pops the the ugly rotation angle again. To give a little history of how I got to this point, I mirror the left arm to create the right arm, I then rebuilt all of the joint orients so that both sides have positive Z rotation. I would just create new bones, but this is the control rig for a bound rig, and then I would have to duplicate the effort there. Plus I've run into this issue enough times to know that there must be some way to easily resolve this issue. If you have any insight into this it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Steve

[penguincage]

It sounds to me like the orientation of your control doesn't match up with the orientation of the bone. If this is the case you can resolve the issue by having a group node above the control that offsets its orientation while still allowing it to maintain zeros for the rotation values. Group the control, move the group's pivot to match the control, have the bone orient constrain the pivot, re-orient the control to its original position and freeze its transformations, delete the orient constraint on the group and then have the control orient constrain the joint. It sounds a little convoluted but it's the easiest way I've found to keep joints from jumping when I constrain them and keeping the controls at a zero rotation value.

[garion-1]

That makes complete sense. I will give that a shot. I think that is the solution I have been waiting for! Thank you soooooo much!

Best Regards,

Stephen