Ankle Orientation issues with Epic Leg

[Hobbz]

Howdy folks,
So I’m having a bit of an issue with the Ankle joint and its FK controller.
(This might have been answered before but I dug around the forums and didn’t find anything. I apologies if this was already answered or solved elsewhere, if so, could someone please link it to me?)

(I am on mgear 4.09)

So i have a guide that looks a bit like this from Front and Right view.

Front

Right

Think of a bulldog with its elbows pointing out.

When i generate the rig, the Ankle joint and the FK controls have really messed up orientations.

I would ideally like for the joint (or at least the controller) to look like this in the default pose :

If the guide is built for a straight legs i obviously don’t have said issue. but the model can’t be changed so I’m sort of stuck with having to align the guide that way.

Any ideas?

[chrislesage]

This would be a hack, and hopefully someone has a better answer. …But it might work:

1. Build it like you did with the wonky orientation.
2. Using whatever method you can, cleanly rotate the FK controls so that they are in a position that they would be in if your model was modelled straight. (Bonus, roughly skin the dog to the bones, so the leg follows to that straight pose for reference. And copy that straight model for now.)
3. Rotate your guides to match the straight FK.
4. Build the rig straight.
5. Skin the temporary straight model.
6. Rotate the FK controls backwards, back into your bulldog pose until the temporary mesh matches the real mesh. Now you have values on your FK controls, but they are relative to something straight. Your animators might actually like that. (Maybe not!)
7. Use the seamless IK/FK switch to snap your IK controls into the right pose too.
8. Maybe if those values are a problem, you can add NPO groups above the controllers. This might break some FK/IK snapping. But I don’t know.

(The reason for this procedure would be to find out the correct values relative from straight that your model is in. You’ll get a clean rig, but values on the controllers. By rotating the FK controls, you’ll maintain correct limb length as you make these modifications.)

[Hobbz]

First off. thx a bunch for taking the time!
I’m not sure i understand ALL the steps exactly. buuut… here is another screen shot of the issue. i built a low poly version of the leg so its easier to see what’s going on.

if i skin that and start moving it to where it needs to be, the front paw ill end up with about a 38 deg rotation in Y i don’t thing the mesh will survive that.

Is there no way to get the joint at the end of the chain to be straight? (the controller along with it of course.) i figured out the offsets i’d have to punch into the joint orient to fix the rotation and clean it out… but at that point the rig starts doing wonky thing : P

when you say :

@chrislesage

Rotate your guides to match the straight FK.

don’t we just translate the guides? rotating them does generally nothing no? i’m a little confused.

[AC10]

using the leg component from the biped template that ships with mgear, i tried placing the guides as you have them, and built the rig. my ankle IK orientation is straight.

what type of leg component are you using?

[Hobbz]

Its in the title : ) Epic_Leg_01,

Also yes the IK orientation is just fine on my end as well. The issue happens with the actual joint and the FK controller. Stitch your leg to FK and take a look at it then.

and i tried taking the template biped leg component, and (Leg_2jnt_01) and i get the same issue.

[AC10]

ah right, didn’t check the FK. have you tried creating your own control that is oriented correctly? i was able to build something quickly that appears to work.

create a nurbs circle, group it to itself. translate snap the group to the joint. drop the group into the rig hierarchy where the mGear control lives. move the nodes under the original control so that they live under your new control.

seems to work, although i didn’t test it extensively. you’d have to set up a set driven key or connection to toggle the control visibility on/off based on IK/FK modes.

IK/FK match script will likely break, but you could try renaming things to match the original names, and that might work.