CGTalk - Controller match?

Egyt

12-08-2002, 11:50 PM

Last days I've been modeling a simple mech to practice animation, to add som complexity to the mech I added hyraulics (spelled?)... Using bones with HI Solver at the grey part of the leg. Now I wanted the colored parts to move dynamically, slide in a line, inherit rotation from the opposite side and so on. First of I tried a dummy locked to the lower yellow part. I assigned a euler xyz rotation controller to the red object and used wire parameters to link the rotation of the red object to the position of the dummy (position xyz controller). the outcome of this was the red object rotated way more than I moved the dummy, any suggestions on what controllers should be used or a more easy way to do it?

I found out that I could create a standalone HI Solver (2 part bone) and extend the helper that was created to the position I want it locked to,,, but this created problems, probably solvable ones but Im to tired at the moment.

Is there I plugin or a way to se the hierarchy (objects linked) in a graphical way? I get so easily confused having a lot of objects.

Btw Im new the the community and 3dworld and I hope I'll be a real pain in the ass asking for help along the way :p

Wish me luck :)

JamesDeschenes

12-09-2002, 01:03 AM

Well I have not had time to look at this indepth.. but have you considered looking at using a rotation reactor or a position reactor controller to control the movement of the hydraulics?

If I am thinking right.. then it should allow you to do what you want. So.. just open the online max help and look for Reactor Controllers (has nothing to do with the Reactor Dynamics Plugin)

Stroker

12-09-2002, 02:26 AM

A little hierarchy and some Look At should work just fine.

I'm going to assume that the leg is seperate objects. I'll break it up into upper_leg, lower_leg, and foot. The hierarchy goes upper_leg > lower_leg > foot. The IK chain goes from foot to upper_leg. No big deal so far.

Let's break the hydraulics up into pieces.
Green pieces: upper_base and lower_base
Yellow pieces: upper_turret and lower_turret
Red: inner_pipe
Blue: outer_pipe

The two seperate hierarchies will go:
upper_base > upper_turret > inner_pipe
lower_base > lower_turret > outer_pipe

Then move/rotate the upper_base and lower_base into place. Link each one to the appropriate leg. That is, upper_leg > upper > base and lower_leg > lower_base.

Give inner_pipe a Look At constraint and make it look at lower_turret.
Give outer_pipe a Look At constraint and make it look at upper_turret.

If your pivot points are right and you know your way around Look At, should work just fine.

Stroker

12-09-2002, 03:05 AM

Here is a quick n dirty example of what I'm babblng about. I had to toss in an extra dummy object because Look At wouldn't let me pick certain objects. Also, I didn't "lock down" all of the appropriate rotational axes in the various hierarchies, so watch out for that. Pull it apart and use some Schematic View.

I'm not entirely sure if all of this helps, but I had fun playing with it.

Max 5, BTW.

mechleg.zip (http://w3.chrlmi.cablespeed.com/~halmich/ozone/mechleg.zip)

Egyt

12-09-2002, 12:27 PM

I had no idea about the look at constraint thx alot, I guess I have to setup my pivots a bit more careful because it caused everything to flip :)

I managed to solve the problem with a standalone bone HI Solver though, example @ http://www.smisk.us/filer/hydraul.avi I had to throw in 2 more pointers to keep the bones in place and to avoid loopback in the linking hierarchy.

But in the long run constraints looks more like my thing to use in this case.

:bowdown: I'll be back to steal more of your knowledge later!

::: http://www.smisk.us/filer/hydraul.avi :::

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