Mechanical Rigging - Coffee Table Top Lift

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

I am attempting to rig a coffee table top lift, and I am having trouble. I created an armature bone for the base, extended up the first arm, then along the table arm, then down the second arm. In theory, it should close itself to the beginning of the first arm. I played around with the settings, and even tried some inverse kinematics, but couldn’t get the bottom pivot point to hold. Could someone explain how this should be rigged.

Thanks,
Bryan

capture_lift capture_lift2

#2

I would use IK. I would also create an extra bone at the end of the last bone in your chain, and parent it (don’t attach it) to the first bone - the base. Now select the second arm bone, and add an IK constraint IKing to the extra bone… with a chain length of 2. You should now be able to rotate the second bone… the first arm… and have the rest follow.

#3

Thanks yogyog, I will give that a try.

#4

Hey, It’s a parallelogram - here is a file with a few rigs in it

#5

Thanks ajcdfin, I will take a look.