Using constraints to make hinges and simple mechanisms

[Adam_Labus (Adam Labuš)]

So I have a model of a drone and it has some technical bits and I didn’t want to animate then manually
so I decided to use constraints to make them and I realised that I don’t really know what I am doing so I simplified my problem![Blender_ C__Users_Adamos_Documents_Cache for blender_The drone for

Let’s say that the red dot is a cylinder or something to keep the two parts together the green dot is another cylinder which enables the vertical part to rotate around it is the only part which is grounded and cant move and what I want is that when I move the horizontal part it rotates the vertical part and then I have second issue what if I add a curve like this

So know the curve needs to be stretched to always connect the two red dots. I don’t know how to make this work and I don’t now if I should even use constraints
So if you can help that would be great

[Larssonklaksson]

Both issues can be solved by parenting the mechanical parts to the bones.
As for the second one, I’m not sure I understand correctly. Why is the curve stretching? is that some kind of imitation of a biological muscle?
More conventional mechanisms would use piston for this, such as on the example below. The arms are parented to the bones, so are the cylinders, which also have constrain on them to keep them aligned.
There is also a hose (for hydraulic fluid) that has Hook modifier on both end so it naturaly deforms as the arms move.

[Adam_Labus (Adam Labuš)]

Wow I actually didnt think that this would be possible in blender without doing the work by animating. Buuut I am having trouble recreating some parts of the example you sent so if you still have the blend file then it would help if you send it in a PM

[Larssonklaksson]

Sure, no problem. There is also a tutorial that might come handy

How To Rig A Piston - BlenderNation

The guy makes it a bit more complicated by rigging the piston itself to the bones, which I think is completely unnecessary. But maybe there’s a good reason for it, I’m not much into animation.

[Adam_Labus (Adam Labuš)]

Okay so I have made an armature for my model I ran into a few issues. (I will focus on the hydraulics later one I get the basics done)
First should the hook modifier be applied on the ends at full strength and on the handles in the middle of the curve there should be a hook modifier at 0.5 for each of the bones that the ends are parented to. OR should there be no middle handles.

Second When I have many boolean objects and other details can I keep the non destructive workflow or should I join them all together and then parent them to the armature because when I dont do that I have to individually set the weight of bones to the individual objects.

Third I cant move the bones so I cant make

this motion and let bledner calculate all the movements of the hinges.

I am a total noob at armatures and stuff because i only focused on materials and modellin by this point and never got to the point where I needed to animate something. (The model is not finished so dont judge )

Here is the blend file https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hlT8GDe2Ajq7Lrlbir1K6z9GdaT4RRuH
I updated the link because the old version had a dumb problem with the mesh

[Larssonklaksson]

ad1: No middle handles. Only two hooks, one for each side. Your model has some wierd issues with parenting and I couldn’t get it to work properly. But when I removed the curves you have and simply inserted a new one, it worked like a charm.

ad2: The mechanical models make the rigging much easier because the individual parts do not deform. Thus you can simply parent the each whole object to a corresponding bone. No need to bother with any weight painting and you can keep all the modifies in your non-destructive workflow ( which is pretty neat, by the way)

ad3: That’s a tricky one. It seems the movement you suggested is physically impossible.The element with the pistons ( the one with the little horizontal bone) cannot move in a straight horizontal line unless you make the pistons to rotate on each end.

Last to note, as I mention, your model has some very odd issues with relationships. As I tried to move various part, I got deformations, artefacts and glitches. It might be advisable to remove all armatures, parents and other constrains and start the rigging over.

You might want to unlock your object modes for this (Top menu:Edit->Lock Object Modes) so you can select your parts in object mode and bones in pose mode. Then just parent them together. Easy

[Adam_Labus (Adam Labuš)]

So I should delete all relationships and parent all the obejcts that are one “part” but more models to a single bone not parent all the models to one master model and then the master to the bone

[Larssonklaksson]

Both options are fine. I would probably parent them to a “master object” and then master to bone. It is one additional step, but might make it easier to read.