need help working with action constraints

[Riptyde]

So I am still working on rigging a character and wanted to use action constraints for a small portion (which will be a skirt object). I am trying not to use physics simply for a matter of saving computing time when it come to rendering. I ran across this tutorial, by CGMasters (http://www.cgmasters.net/free-tutorials/modifying-a-rig-to-a-new-character/) which at 12:46 he briefly talks about bones he added that will animate the flaps of his character based on the leg rotation. I like what he has and have applied what is shown. For the most part it does what I need, but does require some manual keying - which isn’t a terrible thing. However, I was hoping to find some way to automate part of it.

So, here is what I want to do.
1 - make it appear that the leg is interacting with the skirt and lifting the skirt when the leg rotates up. With the method shone in the video and what I have, the skirt begins to move immediately with the leg.
2 - As the leg rotates up, the skirt would “slide” up a bit. So I want the bones controlling the skirt to scale.

To do this, I was hoping to use action constraints to animate the influence of the lock bone (see below and see the video for better understanding). This would make it appear the leg would be interacting with the skirt to lift the skirt as the leg rotated up. I would use the same action constraint to affect the scale of the skirt bones making it appear as though the skirt was sliding up the leg as the leg rotated.

I made the action and have applied it to the top skirt bone (for scaling). The two issues I run into are 1) the action works when I rotate the leg backward but want it to work when I rotate the leg forward and 2) I want the action to take affect over the course of a 90 - 100 degree rotation. instead it is almost instant and not a nice gradual change.

I have also watch the video regarding action constraints from the Humane rigging series by Nathan Vegdahl.

below is an image of the set up that has been uploaded.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I’m sure it is something stupid simple again, but just can’t find it.

I have uploaded a file of the rig only for my character.
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41896

Attachments

[Cyaoeu]

You can change the target range and action range for this. An example:

A negative max target range means that it will work from 0-(-30) degrees in X. The action range can be the range for the actual action (1-30 in your case). If you want to delay the action slightly you can change the min target range to -20 or something, maybe that will look more realistic (the skirt scales down when the leg actually hits the skirt). You can just try out different numbers and see what they do, that will help you learn how to use the constraint.

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[Riptyde]

Cyaoeu. Thanks for the feedback. For Target Range I was flipping the min and max numbers, which is not what I wanted. I never thought to give the Max number a negative value. This made it possible for the action to happen when the leg rotated forward. For the Action range, I adjusted the key frame in the action to 90 and the end value to 90. This worked and now the action takes place over the course of the leg rotation.

thanks again. I knew it had to be something simple.