This is the result I want: http://i.imgur.com/BS2P40u.gifv
This is how the bones are arranged: http://i.imgur.com/y5PtPUs.png
The particular part that I can’t figure out is the string rolling OFF the wheel.
The bow bending etc. is all done and working with bone constraints.
I animated this frame by frame which is why it’s not fluid and looks jarring.
I’ve searched for weeks but I just can’t find a way to achieve this result without frame by frame animation.
Thanks in advance for the help.
That is a very nicely designed rig! I only see very small glitches in the string rolling off the wheel/cam as is, are you looking to polish this to perfection?
The uh string rolling off is in all likeliness a rigid body with constraints.
cgMasters tutorial <-- could give some additional ideas
I definitely do, I’d prefer it to be automated with constraints but if I can’t make it work I’ll do ~180 frames by hand.
That’s what I started with but rigging a compound bow is way more complex. The string on a regular bow has only 3 points that need to be accounted for. The string on the compound bow has about a hundred, the more bones the more accurate the string will be.
OK, I see now. Any chance you can make the .blend available to work on?
Yes, a blend would help a lot. You don’t need to share the whole model. The armature should be enough. Also the string mesh and at least the cam would help. (Or suitable stand ins.)
I recently “fixed” a bow from the cgmaster’s course. The limit distance constraint used in that rig will not allow proper main/root bone scaling. I replaced that constraint with a couple transformation constraints. The thread is here: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?404879-I-appended-a-rigged-object-but-rig-loses-functions-after-moving-in-object-mode-video
Good luck!
