Rigging An Armature With Dependent Mechanical Joints

Hi everyone

Hope you can help here!

For ease, I’ve attached a file for reference. It’s a toy “grabber” arm.


I’m trying to rig this with an armature so that, when the top piston ring (the outside collar) is moved up or down, the grabber “jaws” grip accordingly!

I’ve now exhausted youtube videos and tuts I’ve found and now I’m tearing my hair out!

My main problem is that each jaw follows a bone, but that bone rotation should be constrained around the attachment pins.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Richard

Attachments

grabber.blend (897 KB)

Heya,

I crudely made it work for one jaw. Instead of those weird object constraints that I’ve never worked with :P, I gave the jaw an armature modifier and assigned all its vertices to the right jaw bone with the vertex groups. I wanna go to bed now, see if you can figure out the rest, otherwise I’ll help you out some more tomorrow, goodluck!

Attachments

grabber.blend (901 KB)

Heya,

I crudely made it work. Instead of using those object constraints I’ve never worked with, I gave the jaw an armature modifier and assigned all it’s vertices to the right jaw bone with the vertex groups. See if you can do the rest from this example, if you can’t figure it out after my almost non-existant explanation, I’ll help you out tomorrow. Cause I want to sleep now :P.

Attachments

grabber.blend (901 KB)

I’ve refreshed the supply on claw rigging tutorials. :slight_smile: https://youtu.be/jsomTbQGah8

IK constraints are a mainstay of mechanical rigging.

Here is the file as well. grabber.DanPro.blend (905 KB)

Good luck!

Brilliant - thank you!!

I thought IK would have to be a factor but just couldn’t figure it out.

Thank you again

Richard

I’ve just been through your custom tut and it was absolutely fantastic.

There is no way I would have been able to get to that point from trailer and error.

Thank you again for your time and effort.

Richard