Constrain maintain offset on VS off?

Rigging
1

Hello!

I posted this question in another forum as well, but didn’t get any reply yet.

I try to describe it in a way which i hope is understandable.

So basically I’m wondering what’s the advantage of either using constraint with maintain offset on vs. constraints withouth maintaining offset.

For example:

Why parent constrain a loc to a joint (to get the loc exactly oriented as the joint), delete the constraint on the loc, then constrain the joint to the loc with maintain offset off. After that parent the loc to the appropriate control.

Why not just constrain the joint directly to the control with maintain offset on?

Or

Just parent constrain the control to the joint, delete the constrain on the control and then constrain the joint to the control with maintain offset off.

Hope you get what I’m trying to ask you.

Thank you.

1 Like
2

It sounds like what you are describing is just a personal preference workflow. I can think of at least one reason I would want to have the option of maintain offset on or off and that is in the case of space switching. You wouldn’t want your control to snap to the object you want it to follow so you want maintain offset on, if I am rigging a control that I want attached at somethings pivot then I would leave it off allowing the constraint to set it to the objects pivot with out the offset(or in other words snapping to it).

1 Like
3

I agree with Matt. Especially orient constraints which can be a lot more stable with maintain offset OFF. If two or more orient constraint weights are constrained to different spaces, even with noflip on, it can get… a little bit flippy. :scared:

Another rare case I can think of is that on occasion I’ve animated the offset of a constraint, and it is a lot easier when it defaults to 0.

I almost always turn it off for aim constraints as well, so I can see if I accidentally got the axes wrong. If you maintain offset, it isn’t always immediately obvious, but then I’ve run into flipping or wobble later on.

4

So is there no reason to not do a direct constrain between controller and joint but to constrain a joint to a loc which is just a child of the controller?