Blender equivalent of sliding/planted keys

Hi there,

Can anybody out there help me with this? I’m wondering if Blender has a similar function to Character Studio’s sliding/planted keys feature where you can lower or heighten the root bone while keeping the feet firmly rooted in their place. If not, does anyone know the best way to achieve this?

Thanks,

Sambad

do you mean stretchy bones, to stretch them? or as a permanent thing, like scaling them. what net action or effect are you going for?

Moving the root bone moves the armature.

For sliding, there is now a special stride bone that prevents sliding.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, let me explain; if you’re animating a walk cycle and you want to move the whole armature via the root bone but want to keep a foot or both feet planted on the ground (so the knees bend etc). Max has an IK section where you choose the bone and set a planted key for that frame so it is unmovable. I hope this is a better explanation.

Thanks,

Sambad

Look at the Floor Constraint. For the strechy bones PapaSmurf was talking about look at the file I posted in the “Mancandy Anomaly” thread. The Root bone (body) will move the whole armature but if you grab the Torso bone it does what you want. It’s just the way Bassam rigged it.

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Yes the Mancandy rig does that but that’s because of basic hierarchy and you can do that too in your own set ups with respect to IK chains especially . Just make the targets for the foot (actually more likely the lower leg or anything else) have no parents or be the “first generation” children of the root bone then go on and create a second root which is the parent of the rest of the armature .
In the Mancandy set up the body bone is the “uber” root if you will and the torso bone is the root of the rest of the body, but each of the feet bones are also the direct children of the body bone and not in the the torso bone’s hierarchy . So when you move the torso bones the feet stay put while the rest of the body moves .
It all just depends on what you want to do and how you set up your rig . There is all the functionality of “professional” software in Blender, it’s just that you have to learn how to set it up yourself . And the most important thing to wrap your brain around is the concept of hierarchy . Once you understand this basic idea you can make your rig do just about anything you want with the available constraints …
And oh if you think what a #$$!!@@# pain to start from scratch just look at this demonstration on rigging in Maya : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA3mxfup7uQ&mode=related&search= … You could do a set up like that in Blender in a minute (literally) and not have input values to make the set up work (play around with the stretch to constraint) . Just remember that you need to set up targets for the constraint and that they need to be the child of the forearm (if like in the vid you are articulating a bicep) and the constrained bone needs to be the child of the upper arm (which the guy in the vid gets around to explain … half way through the looong demo … but hierarchy is hierarchy no matter what package you use).