Proper way to reorient a single joint on leg IK componet?

[RogerRidley]

Hi everyone,
I’m new to Mgear and have a question about joint orientations. I’m trying to match the Epic Maniquian (y up) template (Mgear 4.3.0) to an existing skeleton. Most of the setup is going well, but I’m having trouble with the ankle (or foot) joint on the Leg IK component. I need to apply a 90-degree offset to this joint to align it properly.

The issue is that I can’t use the offset feature in the settings, as it applies the offset to all the joints in the leg component. I only need to reorient the ankle joint, which is the last joint in the component, with the 90-degree offset.

I tried reorienting the joint in a post-process, but that caused issues, particularly unwanted rotations when moving in IK.

I’ve attached a screenshot showing the joint I want to reorient to match my current skeleton. Any ideas?

Big thanks for any suggestions!

[Milio]

mmmm… so if you have an existing skeleton, why not use the mGear “connect to existing joints” feature?
You don’t need to recreate the joint hierarchy and be worried about joint orientations.

[RogerRidley]

Thanks, Milo!
Sweet feature! Honestly, I wasn’t aware of this. So, I froze the rotation transforms on all the joints in the skeleton I need to match to, and then I rebuilt it with this feature enabled. However, I still don’t see any difference in the joint orientation on the ankle. It still has a 90-degree offset. Maybe I’m doing something wrong?

[Milio]

That feature will not create any joints when building and will connect the rig with the joints you have in the scene.

This @Miquel video might help you figuring out how to do it.

- YouTube

[RogerRidley]

Thanks, Milio!
That’s super helpful!

I’m a bit confused about how I can “map” the metadata to my current skeleton. In the video, @Miquel uses the skeleton generated from an Mgear setup, then deletes the rig and aligns the guides. Cool! I tested this, and it works on my end too, awesome! However, I have a different skeleton that doesn’t have the same metadata or parameters as one generated by Mgear, so the guides won’t match or generate a rig on top of it. How do I add the metadata to skeletons outside of Mgear?

Also, this feature looks like it’s awesome for matching guides to different Mgear skeleton sizes and proportions, but will it solve my original problem, which was the joint rotation on my ankle joint needing to be adjusted?

Sorry if I’m totally missing something… I’m not a learned man.

[Milio]

I think that is the metadata added to the joints. Just add the attribute to the joint to be able to connect when building .

[RogerRidley]

Big Thanks @Milio!
That did the trick! This issue is resolved but feel free to correct anything I did here.

Steps taken if anyones curious:

1. Built rig choose joint you want to reorient add in whatever offset you need. In this case a 90 degree on X for my ankle joint.
   

   

2. Go mGear > Shifter > Game Tools > Delete Rig + Keep Joints. This leaves the corrected skeleton behind. becouse it has meta data on it Mgear will pick it up next time building.
   

   

3. Select your guide again > build. It will build rig without a skeleton and instead use corrected skeleton in the scene. It also hooks the rig up!
   

   

I’m gonna try and remap the meta data onto my current skeleton next, but this give me a solution for now! Awesome work guys!

[Milio]

Amaaaaazing!! Glad you worked it out!!