Why is the dogs leg rotating in the wrong direction?

posted to: Rigging a Dog

Why is the position of the dogleg so wrong? I tried something with the Roll in Edit Mode, but I can't fix it.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    rroguethorn Could you provide a download link for your .blend file? I'd like to take a close look at what's going on.

  • Marco Eckert(roguethorn) replied

    Here you go

    [LINK NOT LONGER AVAILABLE]

    Thanks for looking at it

  • Kent Trammell replied

    @waylow Could you take a look at this file? I've played around with bone roll and the IK constraint but can't figure it out. If anyone can, Wayne can 💪

  • Wayne Dixon replied

    HI Marco, 

    I can't totally solve your problem but I can see that there's a couple things going on here.

    Back.000 has a -10 degree roll on it (and it shouldn't). this is translating it to one side when you probably don't want to be.

    Try locking the z axis on the all the IK leg settings (this is in the 'IK settings' for each bone, not the transforms or the thing you animate)

    Then adjust the pole direction so it's about -90 degrees.

    This will get you most of the way there, but really a dog leg needs to have a different rig design (double IK system) so you can pose those joints where you need them.  But I don't think we have

    Here's a few more issues I can see, Marco.

    The front feet controls are not aligned with the world, they are pointed diagonally.  This means that when you animate the control, you need to animate 2 channels if you want to translate it in any direction,   Rather than having the x,y,z line up nicely like the back foot. (however the back foot has a 1.5 degree roll when it should be 0)

    You also have a weird bone roll on the tail joint, and a few of the control bones are actually weight painted to deform the mesh, when they shouldn't be.  (Head IK, Tail control and more)

    I hope this helps Marco, but mainly don't give up!

    We have some more rigging content in the pipeline that will help you really understand how this all works, but in the meantime don't be afraid to keep messing around and breaking and unbreaking stuff.  It is a really good way to learn.




  • Marco Eckert(roguethorn) replied

    Thank you very much for the nice hints. I'll think I try it again from the beginning. I don't know what I messed up :)