I’m back with problems with my airplane. I’ve got the plane done. I’ve got the driven IPOs set up. I’m ready to let 'er fly!
There is one single bone in the center of the airplane. This bone drives the movement of all the control surfaces. When the bone moves around the Z-axis, the rudder of the plane follows suit. When the bone rotates around the X-axis, the left aileron rotates up/down and the right aileron rotates down/up. The entire body of the airplane is also driven by the armature in every way (Loc&Rot).
To make flying the plane easy, I’ve added a path to my scene. When I parent the armature to the path (ALT+PKEY > Follow Path) the armature follows the path but the body of the plane remains stationary.
I imagine the airplane stays still because the armature isn’t really moving its position from frame to frame - its just following a path? But what, in your opinion, would be the best workaround to get the armature/plane moving together?
OK they move together; however, the control surfaces remain unaffected by the movement of the armature. In other words, it is as if (from the control surfaces view) the armature isn’t moving at all.
As you say, the path animation doesn’t actually change the location or rotation of the bone (you can confirm by watching the Transform panel for the bone while it’s “moving” along the path). Because of this you also can’t bake path animations to IPOs. You will have to set rotation keyframes on the bone manually to make it move the control surfaces :(.
Yeah I think you told me that a month ago when I tried this back then but… I guess I was just hoping someone else had a better idea?
I think I’m going to abandon the path idea and simply hand-position the airplane at key points and just have Blender’s IPOs create motion. Not super difficult, but super time-consuming!
