I've noticed that the hand lock pose for the knight orients the hand bone like the steady arms bone and keeps the hands pointing in a specific direction while the rest of his model moves and bends around. I'd like to use this to help keep the knight's hands planted on the rungs of a ladder as he climbs it, but I can't seem to rotate the hands to any position other than straight out from the body (-X/+X) once the hand lock is turned on. Turning off the "Store Roll" option at least allows me to roll the wrists. I'm thinking there must be a way to get these useful poses to work like they should but my tinkering with the hand lock relationships so far hasn't been entirely fruitful.

Thank you,
Chris

That rig seems to be seriously messed up, but a quick and dirty solution is to go in the model...

Relationships>User Properties Relationships>Rig Relationships>Right Hand Lock Realtionships>Relationship1>Bones>Right Hand>Orient like Steady Arms

and turn "Apply before Action" ON

Do the same for the Left hand

Apply before Action is an "advanced Property" and you need to go to the Tools>Options>Global to check "Show Advanced Properties" for it to be visible.

Bingo. Thank you for introducing me to the advanced properties, Robcat!

Would you say that little tweaks like this actually make the rigs work more stably in the current versions of A:M or that they are simply too old to be of use for much longer. I've worked a lot of modifications into the knight's rig for my own character but if feels sometimes like I'm duct taping a leaking oil tanker. I appreciated the tip!

Chris

Knight has A:M 2001 rig in it and since A:M constraints should still work the same way now as they did then the rig should still work now like it did in 2001. But I think something in that character has been mistakenly changed. Or maybe that one little option doesn't make the jump to V13's new file format properly. I dont' know. I'd have to get out my V11 to test.

In general, the A:M 2001 rig doesn't really represent best practices for rigging anymore. For a new character I'd choose Squetch or TSM2 or the new A:M 2008, all of which incorporate more modern notions about rigging.

Excellent. The last I saw, Anzovin was no longer supporting or developing TSM for Animation Master. Upon review, I'm finding that they've released it as freeware, which is fantastic. Where can one find the A:M 2008 rig? I've seen a series of posts for it but if there are links to the rig, I can't find them.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=43

The 2008 rig doesn't have an installation rig posted yet. I'm working on the installation instructions for it before I post the installer. There are 2 models posted in the thread that have the rig installed that you can try out.

Great. Thank you!