Hi;

I have just realized that I am not able to align the gizmo of a constrained and animated null (and any object in Houdini for that matter) to one of multiple alignment options like ‘Object’. The transform gizmo of the ‘look-at’ constrained null object seems to be constantly aligned the world no matter what option is selected. Because of this, I'm not able to get the null to move toward its constraint target on a straight axis.

Am I missing something or if not, how can this possibly happen in a highly sophisticated application like Houdini???

AJ

since object transform defined by its parents and parameters happens before the constraint is applied it's gizmo will still show pre-constrained alignment, which is correct as any change done to the gizmo is applied to the parameters on the object which may or may not be used by the constraint that's applied

Thank you for your reply. Oh Goodness… That's terrible news How am I supposed to move a ‘look-at’ constrained object directly toward its target on its constrained axis? Is there a workaround for this?

I must admit that this one I've never seen before in any other 3D application. Totally off-putting…

Hey noc2,

Maybe you can make a child null of the constrained one and move that in its local axis?

Cheers
CYTE

Hi CYTE;

Yeah, that seems to be the only viable workaround at this point. As for the camera, I'll try and give the built-in target based gizmo a shot, see if that'll work. I mean, this is mind boggling in the sense that every constraint in any given software works through world-space transforms, yet when it comes to manipulation, the user is given the option to transform the constrained object by its local transform and then it'll be channeled to world-space. Despite the given reality, I wholeheartedly believe that this is an issue in Houdini and that it should be addressed.

Cheers;

AJ