Rigging goes wrong direction or else twists mesh

ArcaneLight · Post by **ArcaneLight** » Thu May 16, 2013 8:56 pm

I have an armature made for my mesh, but I am having trouble with the rigging for the legs. Here is a front and side view of the legs as they are supposed to look on the mesh.

I am attempting to set the bone on the far left in that picture above as the pole target for the shin bone so that the knee will bend out in the correct direction. That results in twisting my leg around 90 degrees though.

If I rotate the pole angle until the mesh is no longer twisted then the knee no longer bends in the correct direction

I have tried clearing rotations on all of the bones involved and then reapplying the pole target but that didn't seem to make any difference. Can someone help me understand this? Here's the .blend file too: http://www.2shared.com/file/cacqtceK/revelate.html

Thanks!

Scooter2 · Post by **Scooter2** » Tue May 21, 2013 2:52 am

Good evening,
I have stopped using Pole Targets for this and instead add an IK constraint to the upper leg with chain of 1 using a bone (in the same armature as the rest of the character) out front of the knee about the height of the knee that is parented to the foot root as the IK target bone. This provides a larger range of motion.
Good luck.
Scooter

ArcaneLight · Post by **ArcaneLight** » Tue May 21, 2013 5:11 am

Thanks. This works for me. I guess pole targets are not the way to go in this case. Thanks again for that.