Would greatly appreciate any guidance on an issue Im having. I have a character I rigged in maya its pretty loaded with nodes and alot of interdependent channels. Mostly on the head.
When I bake an arm in ik , )im selecting the joints driven by the ik ) the hand stretches away from the wrist like its melted cheese. The hand doesnt do it on the solver before I bake (record) its fine. If I delete the marker for the hand it doesnt do it but then its as though the RD settings barely add any overlap animation at all.
Arms on my rig are basic ik/fk switch the hand is fk from wrist to its dependent fingers. Im sure it’s something Im approaching incorrectly as RD has only been in my greedy mits for a single day .
Thanks anyone for any help
Hi @hockeypuck, welcome to the forums! 
Would it be possible to include a picture or video of what you are seeing? It’s very hard to tell what’s going on based on a description alone. If your character is a secret, then can reproduce the problem on a different character or even just a couple of new joints in an empty scene?
In a little bit of a crunch at the moment but will definitely get that to you as soon as Im able
Hopefully tonight.
Although I did see another exploding rig issue here on forum caused by skin clusters resulting in double transformations and I believe I had added a handful of blendshape corrections at some of the finger joint bends that were losing volume . Strange thing is the disconnect after RD record seems to be at the wrist but it looks alot like the double transforms in the other exploding rig issue posted in forum.
Thanks Marcus
Top 2 Pics shows just adding markers to 3 arm controls in fk.
After record markers offset taking arm fk controls for ride
Bottom 3 pics show adding markers to upper arm forearm and hand joints in ik
After assign and connect the hand marker is huge , after resizing it and recording you can see the hand geo and forearm geo breaking in playback
Im sure Im doing something incorrect would he great to know how to adjust rigs to allow use of RD in overlap anims
Ty for any help
Ok, it’s very hard to tell with still images, but if I had to guess, I’d say your joints are retargeted to the wrong control. I don’t know which control they should be retargeted to, since I can’t see what’s going on. But for the hand, it should be the same control you’d animate to move the hand.
Have a look here to visualise where things are retargeted currently.
Ok I have the fk control for the hand when switched to fk , and the ik control when in ik controls just the hand as though in fk as though the fk hand is pulling around the forearm and upper arm behind it.
So should I select the two arm joints driven by ik and then the ik controller?
Sorry I’m having trouble following along, any chance you can record your process from (1) referencing your rig, (2) assigning a marker and (3) attempting to record?
Normally, you’d assign to anything you’d want a simulation to follow, and if that thing isn’t also suitable for recording - like an IK joint - then you’d retarget that thing to another control, like an IK handle.
I’d recommend - as a starting point - to stick with assigning to FK controls and expect simulation to end up on your FK controls. Then once you’ve got something that works, you can learn more about how to assign to both FK and IK controls which is the next level of complexity.
Hey Marcus again thank you for your patience and im reading up on retargeting now
The image I posted earlier the top two images are what happens when I place markers on the fk arm controls. As soon as Ive assigned them the fk controls become misaligned to their joints. Then when I hit record the arm markers move far off from the rig and take my controls with them 
Its going to take a little time for me to figure out how to setup RD on my rigs but RD is so awesome its worth the time and effort
Ty for the link on retargeting ui to troubleshoot errors Ill take another look tonight.
Hey, having a look at this now.
With your permission to share, here’s what I’m seeing - after a clean setup on joints with proper retargeting.
The cycle warnings explain the recording trouble, but what causes the cycle warnings in the first place?
Looking at just the rig itself, something is not right here. Notice that the character rotates twice as much as I rotate it? Like there’s a double-transformation happening somewhere. And this isn’t just the hip, but nearly all controls.
Now let’s see what happens when we try and connect this hip to Ragdoll.
- Run
Extract Simulation - Parent Constrain your hip to Ragdoll’s hip
This is how Record Simulation works under the hood and is a good way to spot issues like this.
And like with the normal manipulator, the character doubles any rotation you give it. These joints are independent of Ragdoll; they are plain Maya joints with regular keyframes on them. If a rig doesn’t support the native Maya constraints, then there isn’t much Ragdoll can do.
Here’s the .rag file you can use with Import Physics to replicate what I’ve got here.
rdtestrig2.rag (45.0 KB)
Hi Marcus
Hmm I have no idea how I missed that double transform on the hip control, although that is the only control Im finding double transformations on . Thank you for troubleshooting this . Ok so stupid question, that one double transform caused all the issues? Because initially I had just added RD to the left arm to test and hadnt included the hip control . Ill fix that hip control issue and hopefully that will have solved some of the issues.edit; ok yes I am finding other dbl transforms on spine controls
Next step for you is trying to constrain your character to that Extract Simulation hierarchy. Once that works, you’ll be ready to go with Record Simulation. Being able to constrain animation controls is generally good practice, so this should benefit you both inside and outside of Ragdoll.
Ok Marcus ty for the help!
I apologize I should have looked over this rig more carefully before posting
Hopefully lesson learned