Armature spline following a curve

Support Animation and Rigging
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#1

Hello everybody, I am trying to make a small animation with a spline made of four bones connected that moves along a bezier curve.

What I have found online is an old thread Armature Bones following a curve and an answer on blender stackexchange https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8187/three-bones-following-a-curve

none of them works for me. Is there a better way nowadays to handle this problem?

#2

have you checked this anwser? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/133012/line-of-bones-to-travel-and-conform-to-curve-train-or-snake-following-path

1 Like
#3

Those answers should work. If they’re not working for you, we’d need some details about how they’re not working.

Other options, unmentioned:

  1. Spline IK, no scaling from the spline IK, all bones set to inherit scale: none, first bone in chain is control bone, scale it up and down in local Y to move the rest of the chain along the curve. No good for cyclic IIRC.
  2. Track marker bones with clamp-to constraints. Clamp to isn’t actually quite linear motion along a curve (not sure exactly how it works) but it’s usually close enough, and saves people the trouble of creating additional, non-armature mechanisms.
#4

Hello @moonboots, this works, thanks. It is also a pretty flexible.

#5

Although it does not work when I try to apply a cloth sims to the armature as explained here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y2g0I_X_hQ

Edit: It is working indeed :wink: Pin groups are necessary. Thanks :wink: