Pivot points of a custom joint

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hey guys,

I am relatively new to blender and getting headaches on a project I am working on: I want to create and rig a robot but I am absolutely not sure on how to manage this.

What I did:

  1. I created a joint mesh. (file is attached)
  2. I tried to create constraints to manage a rig without bones because i thought this is the right way to go for mechanical and hard objects…i roughly get the the first pivot point correct by eyeballing it but at least on the rest of the segments i fail completly…

My Problems:

  1. I am not sure about if it is the right way to do so just with constraints and without bones.
  2. The pivot points are not in the right direction to rotate the several parts correctly (see pictures attached)

My Questions:

  1. Would you guys do this with constraints and without bones too?
  2. How to corresctly set the pivot points and origins to get a working result?

screenshots:

joint-mr-201118-002
joint-mr-201118-0021920×1080 51.4 KB

file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xch8phhztd8pop8/joint-mr-201118-001.blend?dl=0

I hope one of you guys might help me - thank you!

Michael

2

Hello, I’m not sure why you don’t want to use bones, I think it’s the way to go. Now if you use several objects to make your robot, select one object, shift select the armature, switch it to Pose mode, select the right bone and parent to > Bone. If you have only one object (and one mesh per part of the robot), select the robot, shift select the armature and parent With Empty Groups, then in select each mesh and assign it to the right vertex group in the Properties panel > Object Data > Vertex Groups

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3

hey, thank you for your time! I managed to fix the problem with bones as you said and with bone constraints - works fine! :slight_smile:

here is the fixed file if anybody else is intrested:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4btqxtb5vpajnx/joint-mr-201118-002.blend?dl=0

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