Bone settings problem...

[Dick Ma]

Illustrate below:
I don't know how to setup.....

[Dick Ma]

here..

[prospector]

there is no need for bones in this example at all.

the piston could be done by stretching and parented to the piston body which is parented to the digger arm and the bucket just rotated in time to that.
All thatr has to be done is to make into seperate layers and make sure the pivot point is set right.

[prospector]

And after looking some more I can see a better way even.

the piston on the verticle arm could be made to morph (yep even easier than previous reply). With the anchor point on the top (where the ram hooks to the top of the arm. And because that is a solid anchor point it would morph from there.
Just cut 2 slices in the ram section and grab all the points in the piston body and half of the ram part and set that to a full extended position and call it ram.open and then make another called ram.closed...
now you have full controle of the ram action.

then just set your pivot points on the others and dig away.

Remember tho morphs don't do a radius so anything that turns has to be keyframed. So bucket can't be morphed and the verticle arm can't be morphed.
But pistons can

[Baloney Pony]

Originally posted by Dick Ma
here..

If you would like to post a zip file containing the objects and scene I would be more than happy to set this up for you. To make it easier for you, include only the arm, scoop, and pistons - just strip everything else out.

Here is a quick breakdown of how I would approach the problem:

As Prospector said, there is not need for bones.

While the morph solution is a good one, and is helpful in some cases with mechanical assemblies, as a rule of thumb, it should be avoided. I do not want to say Prospector was wrong. Please do not interpret it that way. For mechanical situations a morph can look soft and you loose tons of control.

The pistons could/should be handled using IK. I know you think IK for for character work, however it can be used for so much more! The entire arm assembly could be handled with IK.

The Scoop part should be hand animated.

As I said before - I would be more than happy to set this up for you - and others - to look at and learn from.

[Baloney Pony]

Here is a link for you:

http://www.syntetics.ch/Tutorials/Tutorial_1.htm


This is the very basics of it - the turoial is in a different language. There is a zip file at the end of the tute. You may want to download that and take a look.

I have not examined it, so I do not know if it is the same way I would do it.

Let us know if you need more help. It's why we are here.

-Da Pony