CGTalk - Aim Control on Tank Turret

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falkaholic

01-25-2006, 04:47 AM

Hi All,

I've been rigging up a standard tank, one with rotating turret with a barrel that aims up and down independently of the turret.

The barrel is parented to the turret. I set up 2 aim constraints. One on X for the barrel, for aiming up and down and another constraint in Y for the turret. It seems to work generally, but the barrel and/or the turret seem to flip out in different quadrants of a test 360'. I've tried am the aim vectors attributes etc in the constraints but none work the whole way around.

Is there a small fix to this, or is there a better way to rig a turret up?

thanks.

rokandic

01-25-2006, 08:59 AM

There are many ways to rig this, but are you really sure you need all those constraints? You could just easily create two controls one for the X control of the barrel and the other Y of the turret. Pretty much simple FK animation.

If I were to rig an aim control version, I would create a simple two joint skeleton down the length of the barrel (starting at the center of the turrent). Create a single chain ik. Create an aim locator, point constraint ik handle to locator. Connect Y rotations to barrel, X rotation to turrent. Now you can move the locator around as you wish. I find this method much safer than aim constraints because of flipping.

Hope this helps,
Rok

falkaholic

01-26-2006, 12:34 AM

Thanks, I'm goign to go for the two controller method. It just seemed so close to working with the dual constraints.

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