Rigging: Bones always wrong direction, legs twisted.

Hey folks,  

I started learning rigging. I watched the fundamentals of rigging and everything worked fine. After that, I did try rigging to a human-like mesh, but the bones are in the wrong direction.  The knee, for example, goes behind the human, not to the front. When I rotate the knee in the IK options into the right position the whole mesh is twisted. 

Thanks in advance 

  • John Sanderson(procyonlotor) replied

    It looks like they are bending correctly (knee towards the front) to me. The IK solver will default to the direction the joint is bent in edit mode.  So if you want to flip it, just bend that joint in the other direction in edit mode. Once you have flipped the joint, adjusting the pole angle in the IK constraint should solve any twisting problems.

  • snowingname replied


    pprocyonlotor Thank you for the fast answer. I tried your advice but the problem is still there. I flipped the joint, then the twist is gone but the knee direction is wrong. Then I adjust the pole angle form the IK constraint, then the mesh is twisted again.

  • John Sanderson(procyonlotor) replied


    ssnowingname you are able to adjust the pole angle in both the positive and negative direction. did you try both? usually you want to go with whatever the shortest path is to get the angle you want.

  • snowingname replied


    pprocyonlotor yes I did both. I also watched some other tutorials and did the same, but still don´t work. When I switch the pole, the mesh is twisting and when I  rotate the bone, the mesh is twisting too.
    Maybe its something rly simple I guess. I just started with rigging maybe some basics I am missing but I can´t find the solution.

  • John Sanderson(procyonlotor) replied


    ssnowingname I made adjustments by re-orienting the joint in edit mode and changing the pole angle and eliminated the twisting.  Here is the file.  Maybe you can reverse engineer it and figure out what you missed.  Good luck!

  • snowingname replied


    pprocyonlotor It´s confusing me. I opened your file and everything works fine. I also deleted the whole armature and did rebuild. 

    Everything still works fine.  When I open the last file from me the same solution doesn´t work.  


    Anyway, big thanks to you!!! At least it works now :)