I have a cool racoon model from Blendswap and I’m now trying to create a Walk Cycle for it.
Basically, when the Armature is totally neutral in Pose Mode (after pressing ALT+G and ALT+R), it is skewed: the IK Bones are out of position. I want the default Pose Mode to be the same positioning as Edit Mode. However, because of my IK Constraints, it’s not. As you can see, the hands, feet, and tail (all with IK Constraints) are all out of position.
Can anybody explain this to me or tell me how to fix it? Thanks as always.
In the Armature context there are two buttons, Pose Position and Rest Position. Switch those on/off and I think you’ll see that in formal Rest Position (using the button), the armature will match Edit mode.
Clearing Transforms on the rig in Pose Mode may not automatically set it to the same configuration as the formal Rest Position, mainly because of the presence of constraints and/or drivers on the bones. In Pose Mode, these are always active (unless disabled, of course) regardless of the transforms on the bones, and can displace the bones slightly as you see. You can check this by inspecting your bones and disabling (the eye icon) any bone constraints. Somewhere in the process your diplacement should be remedied.
Of course, you need the constraints, so you have to figure what’s going on. I can’t say this is always the case, but I found that often the bones either acting as constraint targets, or those owning the constraint, may have become slightly displaced in Edit Mode. If so, that can affect the bones’ position in Pose Mode, and that in turn can affect any constrained bones. Even a shift in bone Roll can do this, which you can see with octo bones but not stick, not sure about B-bones.
In many cases the displacement is trivial – using the Rest Position button is more reliable than clearing transforms if you need to set the rig to default for some operation – and can be ignored. But if not, dig into the constraints and drivers, disabling them one at a time to see the result. In complex rigs this can be a pain in the rear, because you have to chase down all the levels of control relationships, but even then, it can be done.
