Problem W/ Motion Trails Tool

[inspector-lee]

I'm having a lot of problems with the "Create Motion Trail" Tool. I'm trying to get Maya to create a motion trail following the movement path of my character's hand control (to check animation arcs) and I cannot get it to make motion trails that follow the selected control object's motion path. The motion trail I do get is usually in some random position (like below the ground plane) and the trail it describes looks unrelated to the movement of the control object it's tracking. I've tried it on the character's hand controls, head controls, hat control but it's always messed up. I can get a few control objects to create a proper motion trail (both the character's feet controls seem to work) but almost nothing else. Ive tried it in Maya 7 on a Mac and in Maya 7 on a PC, as well as with much earlier versions of my file, and the results are always the same. Any help with this would be really great. Thanks

[gmask]

What type of node are you selecting? It sounds like the nodes pivot is some where off in space.. which sometimes is the case with constraint nodes. You might try parenting or constraining a locator to the rig and then select it and make the motion trail.

[inspector-lee]

Thanks, that worked pretty well. At first I thought the pivots looked fine on my control objects, but once I unparented them, they snapped down below the ground plane- exactly where the Motion trail was occurring.