Jarred Love shows how you can make a joint constraints setup with matrix nodes that can fix orient issues.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a tutorial from Jarred Love, but a new one shows us how we can avoid common joint orient issues in Maya. The new tutorial covers how to create a joint constraints setup in Maya using matrix nodes.

It’s worthwhile to note that Maya 2020 added some new nodes that offer a more direct setup when rigging. Jarred notes that the new offsetParentMatrix can also run into troubles with joint orientation too. So this method can also get the correct rotation matrix to pump into the joint there. Jarred also mentions that there are a few notes he forgot to mention in the video:

The composeMatrix node does not necessarily need to stay in your node network. You can use a getAttr on the ouputMatrix. Then setAttr on the multMatrix node’s matrixIn[0] attr to keep that value (which should help clean it up a little bit).