I’ve got a question, sometimes there are situations where one would like to lock a bone (which could be any bone of a figure), then for example rotate the root bone to bend figure forward or backward; but want to keep that first bone still locked in position.
Or another example, you like to rig a figure hanging on a cord with one arm, he’s for dangling on the rope.
How can we set a specific bone, like in the hand, to be a lock from which autoIk can work, or at least keep the hand in position while we move other parts of the rig; how to do that with blender?
Another example figure holds a rope, hands are ??locked?? to an empty on the rope
Feets are also locked, and figure is bended backwards, like people pulling ropes.
Now pull the rope how can we lock the feet and keep the arm to the road, while the rest is allowed to move.
I, know knees could make strange bendings in the rope example, but one can lock rotation axis…
Your rig needs to be set up with these things in mind. What you are wanting to do is available if you use rigify to rig your character. Rigify has a few options that will allow you to isolate the rotations of the legs, head and arms. It’s very useful for doing things like your example. It really cuts down on the amount of counter animation you need to do.
I would recommend getting the Animation Toolkit from CGCookie or Humane Rigging by Nathan Vegdahl, or both. There are quite a few Rigify tutorials on youtube, but none that will go into detail like the two tutorials that I listed.
Maybe I dont understand.
If you want to lock a hand to an empty on a rope for example, I guess you could use a Child Of bone constraint, on the hand ik target and also the armature root bone.
Then keyframe the influence when you want to lock/unlock.
I dont know which animation software i used in the past, this was years ago. But it had a feature in which you could not move a character further that what it is holding. I think it was AM. so if a character, is hanging from a rope, or holding ones hand he could not be moved further than the bone chain can stretch out. However i would to know if blender can be rigged in such a way?
I’ve got a question, sometimes there are situations where one would like to lock a bone (which could be any bone of a figure), then for example rotate the root bone to bend figure forward or backward; but want to keep that first bone still locked in position.
The first thing I think of is taking that bone that needs to move indipendantly of the Root and placing it out side the influence of the Root bone… that is to say … unparent that bone from the Root bone…
If you need that bone to some times follow the Root bone and some times not… then you can always add a “Child of” Constraint to that bone making the Root bone it’s target…
now you have the ability to turn off and on the influnce of the “Child of” Constraint using the 'influence" Slider…
An interesting example of this is Nathan Vegdahl’s “Switchable Parent” see here…
skip over to about 9:30 to see where Nathan talks about this in this particular video…
(this video series is great by the way… you should watch the whole thing… in fact I suggest you purchase it on dvd from the blender shop… to encourage Nathan to make more of these things)
However…
Or another example, you like to rig a figure hanging on a cord with one arm, he’s for dangling on the rope.
How can we set a specific bone, like in the hand, to be a lock from which autoIk can work, or at least keep the hand in position while we move other parts of the rig; how to do that with blender?
once you started talking about making the hand bones stick to things… then we need to create a slightly different thing…
To do this you need an extra bone… or even an Extra Empty Object…
Go here to see how to do this…
well I was going to give you a link to an excellent video by David Ward that ‘was’ on CG Cookie about doing almost the exact thing your asking about … but… it appears that they took it down…
That’s what happens when subscriptions get involved in the free spred of information… o’ well…
anyways… I will see if I can’t dig up some information on this… or do a tutorial on this my self…
which if you will note I put all my tutorials (what few I have) up on vimeo…
