Rigging a Handfan / Accordion

Hey guys,

I’m trying to rig some hand fan but so far I’ve had no luck finding any resource explaining how that might have worked. In case you don’t know, what I’m after is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBbe8GBzcNw

Here’s a small sketch I did

I mainly want it to stay on the baseline. Does anyone have any advice or pointers on how I might be able to do this?

Thanks in advance.

Try this, its twice what you want but I am sure you can adapt it… :smiley:

tongs.blend (587 KB)

To operate it, just scale the bone “Stroke1”.

Hope this helps you, let me know if you want more advice.

And welcome to BA!

Cheers, Clock.

Here’s a hand fan rig I did once…

FoldingFan.blend (292 KB)

In that file, each section that folds is an IK chain. The vertical bones control the IK target bones. For an accordion, I’d use the same sort of IK chains, I’d just change the control mechanism. Not really sure how I would do an accordion because they can vary in length between the top and the bottom and the difference in length usually means the bellows are curved up or down. I’d have to look into it a bit more…

Randy

Give us little more information on your question. Hand fan and Accordion motion are different. And they are rigged differently.

Hand fan opens up and closes around a pivot:
http://www.french-treasures.net/images/objets/11543.jpg

Accordion, the music instrument, can expand and compress:
https://www.gigmasters.com/images/categories/accordion2_small.jpg

And then there is Bellows:
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/bellows.jpg

And move up and down, and move front to back, and rotate in all three axes…

And that applies to both halves of the instrument and the 16 or so intermediate ribs! If this is what you want, you have not picked an ideal first animation subject. Having said that we can of course help you, just let us know what you want as @Randy and @Ridix have said.

Cheers, Clock.

have you checked into the ‘slow parent’ function? seems like it could be useful here. I am assuming it’s in recent builds…I have not used it in several years, so I’m not sure.

I’m also interested in this rigging technique. Any progress made on this? I would like to make the same rig as the op’s diagram and have one handle that controls the entire rig that translates in one axis only. I’m currently hard at working trying to learn IK rigging, but have not made the progress I’m hoping for.

I managed to make a satisfactory rig by using an IK bone and constraint on every other link that resides on the “baseline” as in the OP’s diagram. Each IK bone has a copy location constraint set to local space with influence set to 0.5 targeting the next IK bone. Each IK bone only targets one other IK bone - the next one in the chain. Each IK bone also has a limit location constraint that limits the movement to one axis, in my case, the X axis. The final IK bone is the handle that controls the entire rig.

I could post a blend file, but I’m not sure that I have the privileges.

I’ve actually updated my rig to use a Limit Distance restraint instead of Copy Location to get a more accurate accordion effect, atleast for my purposes.