I’m trying to rig a character to ride a bike, but am having trouble keeping the feet in the proper orientation. I have just about no experience with armatures, and am hoping someone will be able to offer some advice.
The character is made up of a bunch of seperate plane objects, which use the armature modifier to follow an armature I made for them. I built the rig so that when I move the parent object, all the various pieces should move with it. The gear hub uses a constraint so that it will rotate as the parent objects moves laterally, and there are two empties parented to it, one at each point which the pedals would be connected. I then have bones in the feet with an IK constraint, and the empties are set as targets.
During part of the revolution, the feet appear to be at the proper orientation. As they move further away from their initial setup, they get more and more wonky. I have tried using the IK constraint on the foot bones only, and now on an additional set of bones that are children of the feet, but still have strange results. I hope my explanation is not too unclear, any help would be greatly appreciated. If necessary, I can send the project file.
Here is my take on the quick rig. Basically you make the chain wheel as the controller. Add empty to where pedal is located. Make that a child of chain wheel. So when the chain wheel is turned empty rotates with it. Create leg and thighbone off of this empty. Add “Child of” constraint to leg bone, making empty as its parent. Finally add hip joint empty. And add IK constraint to the thighbone to point to the hip empty to fix that end of bone while every thing rotates.
Thank you ridix and norvman! Both of your replies were extremely helpful, I will be implementing your suggestions tonight! I’ll be sure to post the final video when it’s done next week.
