Constraints

Changing Pivot of a Parent Constraint

Changing the pivot of a parent constraint without affecting its children (CGTalk thread)

Constraining directly to a mesh

You have options:

pointOnPolyConstraint

rivet (mel script)

Bonus Tools --> Surface Attach

follicles (Maya Hair)

Mr. Duncan Brinsmead writes:

There was a bug with a degenerate rotation case with follicles that was fixed a couple of releases back. I think it should be pretty robust now, but if you still encounter any bad cases please log a bug.

Also note that one downside with using follicles currently is their reliance on continuous unique uvs. At some point it would be good to additionally support triangle ids with barycentric cords. (although this would not handle topology modifications as well)

many people seem to believe that the old rivet script is still the best way, but I still like using follicles and have had fewer problems (with rotation & weird flipping, that is) than even with rivet script.

What's the best (ie., FASTEST) way to constrain multiple objects to a mesh ( like, 20 buttons..)?

Using rivets on a mesh that's bound to normal mesh - 25% slower

Constraint is not Refreshing Properly

can be updated by setting dag nodes to dirty:

dgdirty -a;

I don't know why, but with a certain rig, constraints were not refreshing propertly. I put a script node in the rig and put "dgdirty -a;" in the 'before' attribute, and set script type to 'Open/Close'. This SEEMS to work.. but still don't know why the constraint wouldn't refresh.

Maya 2014: poleVectorConstraints break in Viewport 2.0; work fine in default viewport. wha..?

Constraining to CVs

get an array/list of all the nurbs cvs.

Orient Constraint Vals. are Flipping but Constrainer Vals are Not

Make sure that rotation order vals. of both the constrainer and constrainee are the same.

Hierarchy Issues

I have a sphere inside a group (the pivots of the both are in the same

place). The sphere rotation is connected to a multiplyDivide node witch

inverses the x,y,z rotation and the output is connected to the rotation of

the group. I thought that when I rotate the sphere nothing should happen

(because the rotation gets inverted and applied to the sphere’s parent), but

the sphere still rotates in a weird way. The exact same thing works well

with translation though.

Do you have an idea how to make this work?

(Osko)

Are you shure both pivots are aligned and orientation the same ?

You could also try this:

Input Output

Sphere.inversematrix >>>

decompose_matrix_node

decompose_matrix_node.outRotate >>> Sphere_GRP.rotation

(R. Polimeno)

Resources

Rubberguppy's method of good parenting