Seems that the roll bones don’t behave in an expected manner so I figure that I could simply make manual adjustments directly on the FK effector for the roll. Well what I can’t figure out is how to free up the rotation of the bone so that the roll of the bone is independent from the hand. Every time I roll the forearm into position and try to rotate the hand back into place so goes the roll bone.

Am I missing something simple here or is this not possible through the control rig?

I would just remove the roll joint form the character and add it to a character extension and there is also a setting to allow the skeleton to be transformed under the character control window.

Brad Clark
Co-Founder: Rigging Dojo-Teaching the art and science of character rigging
Author: Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging
The Character Animator Toolkit for Motionbuilder :available now:

You can also switch the roll extraction method in the character settings tab from relative to absolute and just adjust/animate that the sliders by hand as another option.

Brad Clark
Co-Founder: Rigging Dojo-Teaching the art and science of character rigging
Author: Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging
The Character Animator Toolkit for Motionbuilder :available now:

Sorry about the late response but I have only just got back to the problem scene.

Taking another look at it I think my problem stems from my lack of ability to pin the hands in the desired position then rotate the elbow joint so the forearm aligns properly with the arm.

I tried a few different things to lock the joint and prevent it from rotating along with the hand effector.

Found a work around.

Plot the animation to the skeleton and then animate the joint using FK on a new layer then plot the animation back to the control tig.