Joint stiffness!

[meester smeeth]

Hi

 

Has anyone had a problem like this before?

 

I need to basically animate a chain, so have used a length of bones and it works well after a lot of testing.  The way that worked the best was to add some stiffness to the Y rotation instead of using limits.

 

I just made 3 seconds of what was needed and thought to just change hold to repeat keyframes in the function curve but after the first 3 seconds, the stiffness value seems to stop having an affect. 

 

Take a look -

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/df121npv55dfoqw/chain.mp4?dl=0

 

I've tried even copying keyframes in the list and the same thing happens.

 

I suppose as a last resort, each chain link could be range exported out and child cycled back etc.

 

There may even be a better way of doing a chain....Any ideas?

 

Al

[AVTPro]

So this is a chain with one IK handle going through the whole length of the chain? 

Maybe skip the first and last few bones. It may be more stable. Then you can use the two end bones as controllers for animation.

Or you can split the IK into two parts and animate the chain from the center and two ends. It should be very stable.

[meester smeeth]

I did try one IK from start to end first but it was not giving enough rotation at each link.  The only way I could find that it would act like a chain was to add an IK for every link and parent them all to the very last IK and this is the set up here.

 

****While just writing this reply I thought to check the project again and realized that I actually had animated a few IK handles separately to keep the curvature of the chain and they where buried away in the chain hierachy(this project was started weeks ago).  So all ok, repeating these frames too now works!

 

Thanks for your time AVT.

[AVTPro]

Great! Glad it's working!

If you are planning to do more rigging, I have 2 best practice, downloadable DVDs available for $100. paypal: athreet@adelphia.net.  Much Success.