Watch: making band bend!! help

[Gardon]

G'day, how is everyone.
I am in the process of recreating my watch on lightwave and ive come to a problem when i try to bend the watch around, the bones dont act as i want them to. I have to tell ya now that my experience with bones and weight mapping is pretty limited. But when i try to bend it normally with bones it cuves, so i tried adding weights to see if i could get it the links to bend correctly, but they seem to seperate from the object. Ne ideas. Ive attached some pictures to help give you an idea.

[Gardon]

This is with weight map

[spinn]

well here's a tip: get rid of the bones! you don't need them. separate the links into different layers, set their pivot points where you want it to bend. then create a null for the "other end" (where next link will be attatched), parent it to the link and set the null on the next link as goal object. (you have ofcourse done the same to all links). then parent this link to the null on the previous one. and don't forget to set pitch konteoller to inverse kinematics. et voila! this will make the chain bend exactly where you want it to.

i guess that was a quick one. do ask if you need help with anything.
cheers.

[hrgiger]

I don't think you need to necessarily get rid of the bones, you just need to be sure the bones pivots are in the correct places and from your screenshot, and it's kind of hard to tell, it doesn't look like they are. Also, since your watch band is made up of rigid bodies, you need to be sure each piece has a weight map of 100% for each bone.

[cybernaut]

I agree with the pivot and null technique. That one always seems to work best with static shapes.

I noticed that the segments on your watch are bending unevenly. What I would do is to bend the watch complete around in modeler to get a clean and even bend on all the segments, then proceed with that pivot and null technique.

Done in modeler first to get even bends.

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/img/ring.jpg

[Rory_L]

Putting bones in is a waste of computing power. Lightwave`s IK deals with object chains just as happily as it does with bone chains, so there`s really no need to make the poor HD jump through hoops it doesn`t need to! You`ll be glad you did it Spinn`s way when you come to do that 1000-watch-bending scene! :D

Cheers,

R

[renatolazzaroni]

None of the segments of the band should bend, they just pivot. So, indeed, the pivot technique is the better of the two. But if you are not planning to animate this, why not just give the desired shape to the band in modeller via a morph ? It might not be as...er... flexible as rigid IK once you are in layout, but it will do the trick.


Renato