Animation Question

Hi everyone I am trying to animate some mechanical components so I set up some armature and painted weights and went into pose mode. My issue is I cant seem to move joints or bones only rotate around joints. How can I move the bones while having the mesh its assigned to follow? I have a rotating arm that slides into a different position and currently I cant get it to do so I will only rotate about its joint.

Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Animation and Rigging”

I’m not sure what your asking…

but … I will proceed with what I am assuming your asking…

First… normally when you parent your bones together… you use the ‘connected’ option… this by default means that you limit the child bone to rotation and scale and with no independant Translation from it’s parent…
the parent moves the child…

however… if you wish for the Child bone to have some movement simi independant of the parent…
you can Uncheck the “Connected” setting…
Select your child bone > Tab into Edit mode > Properties Panel > Bone (the bone icon) > Relations > Parent > and you will see a series of check box options… Connected, Inherit Rotation, Inherit Scale, Local Location…
Uncheck Connected…

now your bone can move around

but note when ever you move the Parent bone it is still going to effect the postion of the child bone…

if you don’t want that… then you don’t want that Child to be Parented at all with it’s current Parent bone…