hi all i have been working on a robot arm to work in the game engine.
but i can’t get it to work.
i have made the arm using bones and i cant move the bones using auto ik, but if it to work i must move each bone individually. but id like it if it would move automatically. pic:
Then use empties and parents instead of bones. You could actually use the action actuator
and combine the rbot arm iinto one mesh rigged.
how do i do that
For the empties method:
add an empty at every joint
Parent each consecutive empty to its predecessor (towards the base of the arm)
Parent the parts to their corresponding empties
now you can add an ipo of rotation to each empty and use the game engine to activate these ipos with an IPO actuator.
For the bones method:
Combine all the parts into one mesh
add an armature with a bone for each moving part with endpoints at the exact joint locations
Parent the arm to the armature, select armature from the menu, then select name groups and in editmode add each part to the corresponding bone vertex group for perfect rigging.
Now add some different armature actions (or just one, if the arm just does one thing) and use the action actuator logic brick and select the action wanted and the playback type.
OH DUDE!!! An Armatron!! I used to have one of those! :yes:
Looks good so far…
sorry this post didn’t help, but it brought back old memories. :o
I wanted one of those so bad when I was little! You rock for having one, man!
Here’s a link for the young 'uns in here.
I had one of these things too! Very cool!
As for mechanical rigging Malefico wrote a nice little tutorial about this a while ago. It’s for an older version of Blender, but still perfectly acceptable. Take a look, it may help you.
Ya, my dad got an armatron when he was little. We got to play with it for a few years, but then the gears wore out, and it quite working. 
I recognize the picture of the red-headed kid at the wiki site! :evilgrin: