How to select only ikHandle and not it's effector using python in Maya?

Question

I'm trying to automate the foot rig process in maya using python. When I try to group the ikHandles using this line of code, ankle_grp=cmds.group( ankle_ik, ball_ik,n='ankle_grp'), the effectors of the ikHandles are also coming into the ankle_grp. I do not want that. I want the ankle_grp to have only the ik Handles and not it's effectors. How do i do that?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It worked when I gave the name of the ik_handle instead of a custom defined variable for ik_handle. ankle_grp=cmds.group( 'ankle_ik', 'ball_ik',n='ankle_grp')

Answer 2

This is because the Maya's command cmds.ikHandle returns an array of two values, the ikHandle itself and the effector ;

cmds.ikHandle(sj='joint1', ee='joint2')
# Result: [u'ikHandle1', u'effector1'] # 

I suggest you to keep you're variable, in order to keep your code dynamic, but you can 'explode' what Maya returns like this ;

ankle_ik, ankle_effector = cmds.ikHandle(sj='joint1', ee='joint2')

Then you can execute without error

ankle_grp=cmds.group( ankle_ik, ball_ik,n='ankle_grp')