Spider through a pipe animation (new blender user)

Artistic Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi,

I’m quiet new to blender and have bitten into a project that is stretching me… so I’m after some guidance or good links that could help me work out the best way to do this… I have a spider modeled and rigged, and also a pipe modeled… now I want to animate the spider crawling through the pipe.

After many hours of tutorials I undertand how keyframing, the dopesheet, and the graph editor work…

but is there a way to make the feet of the spider physically ‘stick’, or be constrained, to the surface of the pipe model each time a step is taken? Or is it a matter of key-framing each step and body movement to make the crawl/walk cycle ‘appear’ to stick to the surface?

Thanks for any advice.:slight_smile:

2

A while back Max Hammond posted a really nice ant model which solved this problem using python:

Maybe it will be some help.

John

3

Yes, there is a way to do this, it’s called Inverse Kinematics. Rather than explain what that is via text, here’s a video that describes it:

And here’s how I created that rig:

I think this should get you pointed in the right direction…

Randy