How do I rotate several armatures the same amount but in different directions?
I am trying to restart an S.F. movie project, my first major Blender attempt. I learned a lot about Blender and 3D. Seeing the ships now… well, I’ll have to redo everything.:rolleyes: And I’m sure learning a lot more again.
So. The aliens are tri-symetrical (?) and have 3 part mandible/jaws and claws (thus I read the Martian invader thread with interest - thanks Rhysy for that walk cycle link, should be of use!)
I’m trying to figure out the best way to rig/animate the jaws opening and closing. I want to have them operate as a linked set, ie, when one jaw opens, the other 2 open the same amount, each is rotated and opens at a 120 degree angle from each other (3x120=360!)
I tried creating 3 bones and parenting them with rotation constraint to a control bone, but the best I could get was 1 opening up and 2 down, not 120 degrees from each other.
Is there another way I could do this?
Rotate the bones somehow before creating them (I couldn’t seem to do that?) and then join and parent? Some kind of local rotation?
Some kind of action contraint? Do I have to use that relative shape tool thing (haven’t gotten the hang of that either)
Add a centre bone sticking straight up from the 3 bones, create ik from each of the 3 bones to the centre bone, by selecting the newly added centre bone first then one of the 3 bones and pressing ‘ctrl-I’ ( while in pose mode) to active bone, do this with all 3. now when you move the centre bone up the 3 bones will close equally towards the centre.
Having trouble getting this method to work. Nothing seems to be happening. I tried it with 2 bones first, and got the IK constraint to come up, but then nothing happens - not in object or pose modes when I move the parent.
Are your bones all part of the same armature? They should be. After you add the first bone, make sure you stay in edit mode to add the subsequent bones (or if you already have separate armatures, use Ctrl-J to make them one). If you’re doing it all correctly, when you add an IK solver to a bone, that bone will turn yellow.
ps. Once you have it set up, lower the constraint’s Influence a tiny bit to make it easier to control.
