I created a character with a walking stick, and I wondered how to rig the stick so it will automatically “stick” to the point on the ground at which it is hit when the character rotates the hand, yet has the ability to be rotated individually while in the air.
The best I managed to achieve so far is a rig with “damped track” and “limit distance” constraints on the stick bone (as shown in the image below), constrained to a bone that is the ground, and parented to a bone that is the hand. But then when it gets off of the ground it still tracks the same point. Do I have to change the influence of the constraint while animating? Or maybe there’s a totally other, better way to do it?
What do you mean by “sticky”?
And the problem by parenting the floor to the hand is that the character has to move the hand when the lower tip of the stick stays on the same point on the ground.
I guess the solution for this might be a toggle-able system (like an IK/FK)? Maybe even an IK/FK system?
Also, when the stick “sticks” to the point on the ground, the hand has to be “locked” so it won’t slide along the stick.
I know this is an old question, but if the walking stick isnt deforming, you could get away with atleast one bone and one empty. the bone is there to control the entire mesh, and the empty will be placed at the bottom of the stick; where its pivot will be. then you’d use the 3d cursor to snap to the emtpy, select the main stick bone, and pivot from the 3d cursor. not as clean of a solution as I’d like, but I thought it could be useful.
I agree with Mr_Mcgee. put an empty at the bottom of the walking stick and use that as the pivot point. Or just set the walking stick’s origin to the bottom of the stick and rotate around individual origins. (While having the hand IK control set as a child of the walking stick)
I dont know why I didnt try it in blender before posting. while it does work alone in the 3d viewport, adding keyframes break it from the pivot point. sorry for the miss info.
Right then, time to redeem myself. I was able to do get a walking animation with 2 different methods. Method 1 used a 1 bone Ik set up, having the tail of the bone pointed towards the handle of your walking stick. the IK is parented to a ground controller, which is parented to a root. your IK controller is parented to the root.
Method 2 will need you to use 1 body bone and a pivot bone for the handle. the body bone will have the tail pointed to the stick handle again, and the pivot bone can be placed where the character hand is (or anywhere near it). the trick to this method will be to use child of constraints, or to speed up the process, downloading the “dynamic parent addon” (seriously, it still works with 3.4 and will save loads of time). here are the files, with keyframes to show my work.
2 words, more inbetweens.
will need to do some adjustment frames, but it does work. you’ll need to key frame with location and rotation aswell. 3D Cusor Pivot Rotation .blend (825.0 KB)
