Hello! For those of you who enjoy watching informative YouTube videos about games and math (like me), you may recognize this video, by t3ssel8r, on programming second-order springs in Unity for his video game project.
It’s a great video, and as someone who wants to learn to animate in Blender (but who is quite bad at it), I thought it would be beneficial to have something like this to add flair, or help as a guide for arcs and other motions. Of course, we have Wiggle Bones and a few other add-ons, but I wanted this specifically, because it gave me an excuse to procrastinate on actually learning how to animate. I’m like that. So after a long time, I figured it out.
It’s a self-contained armature, powered by an object with geometry nodes and a handful of empties, that essentially converts the red target bone’s motion into springy motion, though the blue spring bone. Linking or appending the collection into a new file Just Works, no installation or scripts required.
As an upgrade to the version demonstrated in t3ssel8r’s video, the motion applies to location, rotation, and scale. The rotation works in quaternions. Yes, that was a huge pain, and it breaks in a specific case that I am incapable of solving, but it works. I also have plans to support forces, like nudging and gravity, and boundaries like walls and radial limits. And probably add an euler option for the rotation.
I could get into other specifics, but I ultimately just wanted to ask: would other people want to use something like this? I’m planning to put it up on the Blender Market, but I’m a hermit who’s never really interacted with the community before. Selling a product is a big new task for me. I’ve already done some research into similar products and tools, and I just wanted to top it off with community thoughts and opinions. I think this would be useful for secondary motion, driving shape keys and other fields, motion graphics, camera movement, and whatnot.
Thank you for reading!
Let me know what you think!