piston or actuator rigging need help

Support Animation and Rigging
1

been a very long time i did not do rigging so have lost most of it !

need help to do some basic piston / actuator rigging for piston

but also get it to work on some shovel with 2 arms plus another arm wich moves along the last arm!
more like a linear actuator which makes it more complicated!

so here is first part as per the old m_collett thread for an actuator

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~m_collett/blender/piston.html

zz2.JPG741×324 42.8 KB

thanks for any help

2

I’m not really sure what you want done. Can you give more details of how you want the arms to move? Better still, a picture.

Best wishes,
Matthew

3

thanks
did not know if you were still on forum here

i got your tut page on the piston examples

got 2 models i think first one is same then the first model you have on your page
but not certain how to redo it!
then i began the second model for the actuator and again not certain how to proceed
to get it going

i like this actuator i think it does not use the stretch constraint
so wanted to learn more about how to do this one
cause on the shovel arms i want to do there a part that is moving along another arm so there is no stretch on it
then that actuator example would be usefull i think

mind you it has been very long time i did not work with rigging
have to get back into it!

here is file i began working

pistonactuator1.blend (590 KB)

here is the final m odel i want to do for the shovel arms

i do have the example for the cg shovel

but the one i’m working on is not the same

zzz1.JPG463×580 27.1 KB

the greyish arm has to move along the other arm
without stretching i think or it wont animate nicely!

thanks

4

solve that one

i added first bone for armature but it is rotated around it’s axis
which command do i used to rotate it so that it is following the world axis?

found it Ctrl-R in edit mode

thanks