-
Elbow type animation with Joints
I am getting close, but cant figure out how to achieve what I’m going for here.
I have a series of joints which I want to move, but be “locked” in position at both ends and only rotate at those points.
After creating the joins with the joint tool and then creating the IK Chain, the end point moves, which I only want to rotate.
I’ve attached a file. Can someone please help me out here?
It should be pretty clear in the file, what I’m going for, but in case I named the last joint “Should not move only Rotate”.
Thank you in advance for ANY help.
-
16 Replies
-
Not sure what you mean by the end moving. In your setup the end of the joint chain doesn’t move if you just move the goal, which is as it should be.
Is this more or less what you’re trying to do?
6079_6077test2amt.c4d.zip -
That is almost exactly what I’m going for, except the end piece isn’t supposed to move.
I’ve attached an updated file which is where I’m at, at this point. The end piece just rotates from the center of the large flat cylinder while attached to the robot arm. My arm comes completely apart, but the joints in my file seem about right. I just don’t get what I’m missing here.
-
Okay, I’m starting to see what you’re looking for. I think your problem is that the parts are arranged under the wrong joints in some cases. Or am I still missing something?
-
Thanks Adam, I really appreciate your help on this one! I was able to finally get what I was going for from what you put together. What you had was 98% what I was going for. Only difference was the piece going to the part that moves back and forth on the wheel is supposed to have a moving joint instead of moving through the cube part.
If you are interested I will post my modification tomorrow. This was was really driving me crazy! Thanks again for all your help.
How did you learn the Character system in C4D? I’m self-taught in the rest of the application… been using it over 10 years and never used the joints before. Having a very hard time figuring it out. Any suggestions you have for me to get a better grasp of it would be greatly appreciated.
-
Hey Tony,
Cool, I’m glad you worked it out.
Like you I’m completely self taught. To be honest I’m not very good with the character stuff. I just don’t have a call to do it that often. What I know I’ve mostly picked up from forums and tutorials. Read a few books, too, but they were fairly general and related more to the art of CA versus the mechanics. I was also on the beta team for some years and figured I’d better learn something so I could test the software. 🙂
Cineversity is a good source most things Cinema. It’s a pay service but IMO well worth the cost. Brian Horgan also has some good Youtube tutorials (some Maya, some Cinema): https://vimeo.com/user2409799/videos/page:4/sort:date
hth
-
Thanks for the tips Adam, and again for your help.
I’ve attached my “working” version, the joint connections are slightly different that what you had, and I’m not even sure how I finally arrived at it!
This joint system is quite interesting and powerful, but oh so mind bending to figure out!
I noticed in one of the files you sent me that there were no “bones”, that somehow the IK Tag was on the actual object Geometry. Not sure if you could explain how you managed that, not sure I’m ready to try to figure that out either!
Tony
-
That’s got it. Great job!
As far as doing it without joints, the concept isn’t hard. The only trick is that you have to group your objects into nulls and then put them in a join-like hierarchy. Then the trick is to position the axes of the nulls so that they mimic the axis position/rotation of a joint chain, i.e., with the axis at the root of the “joint” with Z pointing down the chain and all the other axes aligned the same way. Then you create the IK chain the same way you do with joints; select the first and last nulls and use the create IK command.
IK doesn’t care if you use joints or other objects. It’s just looking at axis position and alignment.
-
I think the most confusing part for me, and difficult to figure out, is how to “lock down” a joint.
Especially when it comes to the complicated robot arm one I just did, figuring out how to make the end and last points stationary, but rotate in those stationary positions.
Would you be able to explain at all? I basically did it by accident and don’t understand quite how to make sense of it.
-
There’s not much to explain. The root joint or object of an IK chain won’t move when you animate the IK goal. It will only move if you select it and move it yourself.
-
That is straightforward enough, but in my latest file which I uploaded, I have 2 stationary points, one of which is not the root object. I don’t understand how it is achieving what its achieving.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up