Attempting to add IK Handles

I didn’t expect to struggle with adding IK handles to the legs of my model, however, it proved more difficult than I had initially thought.

For some reason when I added the IK handle to the joints on the leg it caused the leg to bend in the wrong direction. To see if it was just my model, I made some joints off to the side and adding the IK handle and found that it worked as it should.

It was suggested to me that moving the knee joint placement to be slightly in front of the hip and ankle joints would remove this issue. I tried this and while it did work it seemed illogical to move the knee joint as it should work even with the joints being in a straight line, which is proven by my IK handle test earlier.

Unsure of how to continue, I’ve decided to leave the IK handles alone for this part and I’m even considering not using IK handles if this issue persists. I feel that moving the knee joint will make the joints appear messy and I’m certain that there is a better solution, so next part I’m going to seek some advice in the hopes of not scrapping the IK handles.