Animation problems

[Randy Johnson]

1. For a cube animation i would try a Free Form Deformer and Point Level animation to animate it.

2. There are a few ways you could animate the phone. Its far easy to make suggestions if you post the model.

/randy

[Brendan Watts]

Thanks so much for your reply Randy. I’m in the process of testing your free form deformation suggestion.

Attached is an IK test I did with primitives and the final model of my mobile phone which I hope to get walking.

Cheers!

IK test:
https://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/flipwalktest3.c4d.c4d-zip.zip?a=downloadFile&user=brendanwatts&path=.Public/C4D/flipwalktest3.c4d

Phone model (untextured):
https://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/B30_-_Back_Body28.c4d.c4d-zip.zip?a=downloadFile&user=brendanwatts&path=.Public/C4D/B30%20-%20Back%20Body28.c4d

[Randy Johnson]

Your ik test looks fine.
I set it up with out any joints and got perfect results.
I placed “front” in a null. I put that nulls axis where i wanted the pivot, in the is case directly on the hinge. Then I created a new null(controller) and added user data slider. i added an expresso tag to the controller null and dragged both controller and the front null into the expresso. Then in the controllers red box i selected user data: front null. then i attached that to the front nulls blue box: coordinates:global rotaion:P

and then you have a controller and can easly set up a walk cycle. you can add a slider to ik the same way but this is the simplest way.

If you are going to be rigging things up you need to set up the higharchy and connect more pieces. The way the model is now is too much to try to rig.

/randy

[Brendan Watts]

Thanks Randy. I don’t think that really solves my problem though – your method (as I understand it) allows you to have control over the rotation of the front and back of the phone but does not allow you to keep the ends of the phone glued to the ground, that is to say, the front of the phone has to stay where it is on the ground while the other part moves up to it.

My IK test worked? When I play it out the initial position mysteriously changes…

Ah well – thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

[Lennart Wåhlin]

I f I understand your project correct, what you want is the “Free” (donation posible)
RollIt plugin by eggtion. It can use the geometry of an object to make it roll on any
surface.

http://www.eggtion.net

Cheers
Lennart Wåhlin – tcastudios

aka tcastudios

[Brendan Watts]

Thanks Lennart. Unfortunatey I’m running version 9.5. Damn.

[Randy Johnson]

The slider will only move in the Z axis not the Y making your model follow a flat surface.
/randy

[Brendan Watts]

Thanks Randy. Is there anyway you could post a demo file so I can see how you rigged it up? If you cant, thank you very much for humoring me thus far!

Kind regards
Brendan Watts