Constraints (orient, parent,
aim) flips when parent is rotated indirectly (by rotating the group it is in)
Basically I want to be able to parent constrain an object to an other object without flipping occuring. For example:
I want to parent constrain (thats the effect i want anyway) ChildA
to ParentA. ParentA is parented under GroupA. It’s hierarchy would look
something like this:
GroupA
....ParentA
ChildA
....(parentConstrained to ParentA)
Now, this works fine when i move and rotate ParentA. It also seems
to work fine when moving and rotating Group A. However, further
investigation (looking at the channels) shows that flipping occurs on
childA when rotating GroupA past 180 degrees. This would mess up motion
blur etc. It becomes really obvious when baking the animation and
looking at the curves. Using Euler Filter whould fix this, but this is
not always appropriate.
It also works in this case to parent constrain ChildA directly to
GroupA, but not in a more complex hierarchy. Say for example I have a
character rig, and I want to constrain the hat to the head joint. I
want the hat in a separated hierarchy so I have the option to bake out
the animation for just the geometry and export that without the rig.
Now whenever i rotate the whole character, the hip, the spine etc I get
issues with flipping on the hat. Rebuilding the characters hierarchy in
order to get the correct rotations would be really awkward in this
case.
I’ve tried different solutions (orient constraints, aim
constraints, parent constraint) but they all result in flipping
eventually. I’m using maya 2008 but I don’t think this is version
specific. Anyone have any ideas?