Looking for some further guidance on rigging this tractor front loader. I’ve followed a tutorial, but was unable to connect the dots between the difference in models. Ideally, I’d like to animate this front loader as I’ve yet to add in prototype components that will be attached underneath the chassis.
I believe the bones have been setup and positioned correctly (following along the hydraulic cylinders), but the largest ‘bones’ are escaping me in how to get the whole system to work. I keep thinking “fluid goes in, cylinder rods move in/out and hence the frame will move”.
I’ve missed something clearly. Any and all help is appreciated – thanks!
Hey! Gotta think the other way around in 3d land, move ‘something’ and a piston ‘end’ can move too!
Here’s an IK piston rig that could be integrated into your rig without dependency loops and such, else you may indeed want to look at the add-on I sell which offers a modular approach to pistons, however, the IK chain method is probably the best non-addon route.
The yellow bone has an ik constraint with stretch enabled and the stretch factor set to one
The top most bone is its ik target
Green bone has a copy rotation constraint that targets the IK bone but is a child of the top most bone
Bottom bone is a child of the yellow IK bone, but, and this is important, it does not inherit scale.
Parent objects to the side ways pointing bones and move the top most bone as desired
note: The side ways pointing bones don’t have to point sideways, you could also just hide the IK bone/set up bone layers once it’s set up properly and create a rig like the that Joseph linked shows, with those bones pointing ‘inwards’ but that would be harder to demonstrate/show.
