mechanical arm

Maxon Cinema 4D

mechanical arm

Posted by Curtis Doss on September 9, 2006 at 10:59 pm

I am new to cinema. I built a mechanical arm in cinema 9.6 and boned the arm with mocca ikfk, when i try to animate the arm the components of the arm deform and the geometry of each piece bends. I need to keep all the the parts rigid. I even set poles, up vector, and set goals but it seems to ignore them, is there any way i can tell the components to stay solid while the bone animates?

thanks
jon

Cactus Dan replied 19 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Cactus Dan
September 11, 2006 at 4:14 pm

Howdy,

If your model is all one mesh, you have to restrict the parts to the individual bones with Claude Bonet or Vertex Maps.

It would be better if your model is made up of separate parts and then don’t use bones for the IK, but use the parts themselves. You can rig other objects with Mocca IK, but you need to adjust the axes of those objects and make sure the axis of each object is at the exact pivot point and that the Z axis is pointing to the object’s child object that will be the next object down in the IK chain.

Here is an example video of a mechanical arm with the model parts rigged without using bones:
https://www.cactus3d.com/RobotArm.mov

Another way you can do it, is to just attach the model object parts to their respective bone and then don’t fix the bones. That way the objects will just ride piggy back to the bones.

Adios,
Cactus Dan

Cinema 4D R9 XL Bundle, BodyPaint, Dynamics
http://www.cactus3d.com
http://www.cactus3d.com/Plugins.html
Curtis Doss
September 11, 2006 at 6:11 pm

Dan, Thaks for your help. I really appreciate it. however I have one more problem. I have posted an image with some notes on the new problem. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again,
Jon
Cactus Dan
September 11, 2006 at 7:36 pm

Howdy,

I’m afraid that is one of the limitations with Mocca IK. I had something similar that was just an accordian folded paper and I did it with a user data slider controlling the rotations, so in a sense it was pushing them out from the base (FK) rather than pulling them out from the tip (IK).

Adios,
Cactus Dan

Cinema 4D R9 XL Bundle, BodyPaint, Dynamics
http://www.cactus3d.com
http://www.cactus3d.com/Plugins.html

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