How to rig a roller blind

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hey guys,

I could use some assistance with setting up a roller blind.

This is what I have so far:

image
image1241×1201 229 KB

The planes should move along that spiral curve.
It works fine for the top plane. It’s weighted to the top bone, and that bone has a Follow Path bone constraint.
But how do I continue now?
My idea was to add another bone (the middle one) to the “end” of the first plane, and then somehow make the third bone follow the first bone, and add a Damped Track constraint so that it always looks at the middle one.
But whatever I try, nothing works. Parenting, Copy Location, etc., it’s all not right.
The planes should always stay connected of course.

Also, something which is really confusing is the difference in “location” between edit mode and pose mode.
Sometimes just adding a Follow Path bone constraint puts the bone in a different position, like if there would be some kind of offset. Even though the offset of the constraint is still 0.

For example I tried adding a Follow Path constraint as well for the bone of the second plane, but that’s almost impossible to align properly, because as soon as I add it the bone just jumps to somewhere.

On a second note, is there any easier way to do this?
The final setup would involve setting up tons of planes and bones…
I need something which can be keyframed to bring it to Unreal Engine, so I can’t use modifiers.

Hope this makes any sense :slight_smile:
Please help.

2

Welcome…

Have you had a look at this thread?

Good luck.

3

I don’t think I can export this to Unreal Engine.

4

You can’t export constraints either… no matter what method you use, you’re going to have to abandon it and use visual keying to save various states. You can do this just as easily with geometry nodes as with bones or constraints

1 Like
5

Use the GN as inspiration to do it in Blueprints?

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6

I can, already did it for some furniture.
Once they are keyframed it will export and import fine into UE via FBX.
What do you mean by ‘visual keying’?

I’ve got an example rolling garage door in UE, which was rigged in Blender. But I can’t export it back out to have a look how it was done :-/

7
8

Do you need a fully realistic roll up around a spiral or could you just use a plane that gets shorter and a cylinder that rotates?

9

I’d like to have it fully realistic, also for learning purposes around rigging.
Don’t really want to get into geometry nodes now, as I already know the process around how to bring a rigged mesh into UE.

10

I still think it may be a good idea to concentrate on making it LOOK exactly like a rollerblind rolling up rather than be an accurate rollerblind.

Even from the closeup, your not really seeing the rollerblind go round the spiral.

How close will the player get to this blind?

1 Like
11

Yea, you definitely have got a point here if it’s a roller blind like in your video (which it is in my case).
How would you handle the plane getting smaller while maintaining a realistic look with the texture?

I’d still like to understand how to do it.
Like here for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBm5idBgK6E
Same concept, just there is no spiral.
How do the individual “pieces” follow each other? Or do they all use a Follow Path constraint?

12

You might want to try this…

and then watch this by @RyanKingArt

I believe you can also try exporting as an Alembic…but I’m not sure of that, for this project…

1 Like
13

Got it working now with empties and Follow Path and Track To constraints.

ezgif-4-cde16d11a8

Now I probably just need to automate the repetitive task of creating all the empties and meshes with geometry nodes. Only problem is I have 0 knowledge about geometry nodes :slight_smile: