Docs / Panel reference / Constraints

Constraints

The six pin types that steer a generation — a sub-card inside Text to Motion, with markers in the viewport.

Constraints steer the generation request, which is why the card sits inside Text to Motion, collapsed, rather than next to the timeline. Its header pill counts how many are active.

They exist in two places at once: as pins on the timeline ruler, and as markers in the viewport. The type picker, the pins and the markers all use the same colours, so a pin you see on the ruler is recognisably the same thing as the marker in the scene.

The 3ds Max viewport seen from the side: a rig mid-stride, and the orange Path it follows running edge-on as a horizontal line with three waypoint markers spaced along it.

#The six types

Type	What it pins
Full Body	The pose shape at that frame — joint rotations only. The root is deliberately left free, so the character still travels and reaches the pose during the animation.
Left Leg	The left-foot effector position at that frame.
Right Leg	The right-foot effector position at that frame.
Left Arm	The left-hand effector position at that frame.
Right Arm	The right-hand effector position at that frame.
Path	A ground waypoint — where the character should be, in XZ, at that frame. Several waypoints make a route.

#Adding constraints

Add Constraint in the card captures the currently selected type at the playhead, from the rig.
The six quick-add buttons in the timeline header do the same for their own type, without disturbing the card's selection.
Clicking a constraint icon on the timeline adds that type at the block's midpoint; right-clicking the timeline offers the same actions in a context menu.

Capture needs a rig — with no skeleton created or picked in Skeleton, the plugin logs a warning in the Console and does nothing. A constraint button that appears to do nothing at all is almost always this.

#Path waypoints

The first waypoint is sampled from where the character actually stands, so the path is anchored to the rig. Every waypoint after that is placed from its neighbours instead of being sampled — on a rig with no motion yet, sampling would drop every pin in the same spot and you would have to dig each one out of the pile.

Drag the marker in the viewport to put the waypoint where you want it; the movement line redraws as you drag.

Two display switches live in the card for path work: Show path length and Show marker name. Both are viewport-only and never reach the server.

#Effector pins

Left/Right Leg and Left/Right Arm each sample their effector joint's position at the frame. There is one constraint per type per frame: capturing the same type at the same frame replaces the previous one rather than stacking a second on top of it.

When a Path waypoint and a hand or foot pin land on the same frame, which one wins is decided by Path waypoint wins over same-frame hand/foot pins in Settings → Extra options.

#The rest of the card

Control	Description
Convert Animkeys	Turns the rig's existing animation keys into constraints. Also available from the timeline header.
Keep constraint keyframes	Keys a captured Full Body pose onto the rig as well, so scrubbing previews the pinned pose.
Clear All Keyframes	Removes those keyframes again.
◀ Prev / Next ▶	Jump the playhead to the adjacent authored constraint frame, wrapping at both ends. `[` and `]` do the same with the mouse over the timeline.