Clear Transformations (alt+g) not working on bones. Could anyone explain?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I have been working pretty extensively on a character that requires an extremely simplified rig setup for my animators.

I have separated out the control shapes for the IK hands and feet as well as those pertaining to the torso and the head onto the first bone layer. Other than these I have a few facial controls which are essentially ends of bone chains on this layer. Everything else is sorted onto other hidden layers, and my options are set to auto IK for the rest of my bone chains.

The problem I am encountering is when I translate the character’s head initially all works well, the bones in the chain that runs down the neck to the torso follow the head quite naturally, but when I attempt to reset the head’s location nothing happens. I am forced to go back to the hidden bones in the chain and clear out each one’s rotations. This solution is not optimal for my co-workers, as they are not as privy to Blender (or 3D modeling packages in general) as I am.

I am wondering if maybe there is some setting I have unintentionally turned off or on that I am unfamiliar with. I am still rather new to 3D as far as rigging and animation are concerned. Any help would I could get would be immensely appreciated.

2

Hard to guess why that would be without examining the blend-file.
Can you post it with just the rig?

Which blender version are you working in?
On Win, Linux, OSX?

3

Fist of all, thank you, motimo, for your willingness to lend a hand. I hope I didn’t unnecessarily waste your or anyone else’s time.

I am on Windows 7 with the 2.76 build.

I actually found a work-around solution. I built floating IK handles by duplicating the ends of the chains that I needed to manipulate and then parenting them to the appropriate fixed bones (For the head IK, I parented the root bone; for the facial control IK’s, the original head bone). From that point constrained the rotations of the original bones to their IK handles and hid them on a separate layer. It works well and wasn’t too hard to set up.

Not sure why the auto IK feature won’t allow the user to clear translations on bones at the ends of chains. Perhaps because the bone chain’s inherent setting of FK clashes with the option setting?

As I am relatively new to this forum, I am unfamiliar with how to post a blend to the thread, or else I would gladly do so for anyone else who might be encountering the same issues I was.