Moveable pivot point

[antonvdh]

Would it be possible to make a moveable pivot point to any character rig.
How to

[bandages]

Yes. What do you want it for? The rig object itself? Or something else?

There is a “pivot” constraint, but I’ve always had trouble with it, so I don’t even bother looking at it. You could consider it though.

My general technique is, you sandwich in a new parent, in the same axes as its child; you give the new child a copy location constraint targeting parent, local->local, inverse all axes; you then move the new parent to set the pivot position, and rotate it to rotate about that position.

Keep in mind, when you have a moveable pivot and you move the pivot, you re-evaluate any existing rotation. It’s not a way to store sequential rotations about different pivots.

[antonvdh]

I want a moveable pivot so you can rotate for example the side from the foot from a specific position or for a hand moveable pivot point.
The example i showed is from a blender rig custom made. So it must be possible.
I found the moveable pivot a very handy solution.
Its for animators.

[bandages]

What you can do is simply rotate about a cursor:

I’ve placed the cursor to the pivot that I want, and I’ve rotated the bone about that cursor rather than about its origin point.

There are things to be concerned about with this-- it’s not true rotation, it’s a mix of rotation and translation-- but I think it’s what you want. It allows for sequential rotations about different pivots.

We can compare to a true moveable pivot:

With this, the technique I mentioned above, I can place a bone at where I want to pivot, and then rotate it. But that doesn’t mean I can just freely move that bone to a new place for a subsequent rotation. The instant I move that pivot, I’m re-evaluating my rotation in the new pivot position:

Now that I’ve moved it to where his left ear was instead of his right ear, the rotation on the bone is being interpreted as around that pivot point.

There isn’t any way to use constraints to create limitless sequential rotations, because the order of rotations matter. But, if that moveable pivot technique I just showed is what you want, then there you go.

[Hadriscus]

@antonvdh I didn’t know about @bandages’ technique (thanks!) but typically rigs are made with a few different pivots (bones) placed at strategic locations and parented to one another, so that the animator always has a controller more or less where they need : toe, heel, etc.

[antonvdh]

What i meant is that the pivot can be moved to for example a bit forward as shown in the picture. i can try to show if it is a bone.
But you can yust move the gimbal. And then rotate the foot on that point. Thanks for the solution.