ANIMATING THE MODELLING AXIS [with IMGs]

[Scott Ayers]

You'll probably have better luck keying the points (PLA) instead of trying to key the rotations.

[mattjakob]

That's what I already did.
When keying the rotation, nothing happens.
When keying the points, I get a wrong interpolation between the keyframes: instead of using the "modified" rotation pivot I think it uses the standard "centered" pivot.

Thanks,

[govinda]

One answer is an Xpresso rig that uses nulls to drive your polygons. Even better would be a rig that allowed those nulls to be virtually 'parented' by another hinge null not in the same hierarchy, so that when the 'parent' null rotates, the child orbits around it just as if it was actually childed to that rotating null. You'd put the hinge at the corner, it'd drive the null in the center of your polygon, and you'd have your mummy unwrapping. The hinge has to be in another hierarchy because of the way null-driven points work with hierarchies, or because I don't understand how to work with hierarchies in Xpresso very well (probably the latter).

The same thing can be done with sweeps, using nulls to drive spline points (an easier Xpresso setup also), but getting it to be as neat as you appear to need it is another thing.

[Cactus Dan]

Howdy,

The problem is that the animation you want to achieve would be a hierarchal animation, in other words the first polygon unfolded would have to be a child of the second one unfolded which would have to be a child of the third one unfolded, and so on. One way I can think of that might work, is constraining the points to a hierarchy of Null objects and then animating the rotations of the Null objects.

Edit:
Oooops, govinda got there first. ;)

Adios,
Cactus Dan

[govinda]

And then of course there would be a joint rig using Mocca. I think that'd be easier actually.

[Per-Anders]

I have an xpresso tool on my website that allows you to animate an objects axis, but as pointed out this is not going to help here as you're trying to animate components of an object. You could use the Morph Tag to do this as it has Rotational Morphs, it would require a bit of work though to set up each and every morph in sequence, but it should be perfectly doable.

[heathivan]

I try rigging this chain in mocca. Make sure the "tear" edges are disconnected on the object.

just a thought,

h

[bobtronic]

I try rigging this chain in mocca. Make sure the "tear" edges are disconnected on the object.

I agree, a joint or bone rig would be probably the easiest way to do it.

cheers,
Matthias

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