I made this simple robot character because I want to practice animating, but I always have trouble with organic character deformations, so I decided to keep it mechanical. This may not be the ideal rigging. For joints like the shoulders and hips I have 3 rotational points (essentially x,y,z). I want to constrain each part of the joint accordingly. The other thing I want to do is create a constraint for the floor for walk cycles, etc. I have set up basic ik constraints before, but I didn’t know how for this character, especially considering it is not in the nature of the joints to move like a humans.
I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to rigging and animating. I’m just looking for the most efficient setup for this character, whatever that may be.
Copy the hand bone and call it hand_handle_L, lengthen it, and set it so it doesn’t deform the mesh.
Then I IK the forearm bone to the hand_handle_L, and set the chain lenth to the number of bones in the arm.
Then I make the hand copy the rotation of the handle.
Thanks. That does help get me started. My main concern is how to handle the joints like the shoulder. There are three bearings or rotational points. I want one to rotate only along x, one along y, and one along z along the normals. So how can I accomplish this along with what you’ve already suggested?
How should I IK this particular rig? I limited which part of the joints rotated on which axis, but I can’t IK it properly with a hand handle. I just get weird movements and the joints no longer stay locked to a particular axis.