Hello everyone.
I’m pretty new to Blender and loving it so far.
To get learn some basic skills a made a simple robot arm.
I added some bones to it and the motion looks “natural”
But i wanna make it so that the head moves straight up.
Now the head moves forward when going up.
I have added the file so you can see what i have done so far.
Can somebody pls point me in the right information
arm.blend (296 KB)
Use a real IK constraint instead of auto-IK. That way you can just key one bone. The interpolator will tween just that bone going up ignoring the others o it will not go out of it’s way for them. Later in the computers process it will calculate the IK to match the position of the bone so the others will move out of the way to make the arm go straight up.
I have included a blend which is probably what you want. If you want you could use the other bone for the target depending on whether you want the top rotator to track something or be free.
EDIT: Sorry I can’t attach (server not responding) and I can’t post links (new member). I’m really sick of this. Hope I helped w/o the attachment. 
Mmm to bad you cant attach file to your post.
Going to try it this evening and let you and others now how it went
No luck so far.
Getting a lot of really cool movement put not the one a want.
I need this
| |
But have this
) )
Think i’m looking to far again to find a solution
I’m not sure I understand exactly what movement you’re trying to get. Could you explain it more please? Which parts exactly do you want to move how?
I got it so that the end of the rig moved straight up and the two bones down the chain moved to accomodate it.
Hey there.
Well the last part of the arm (moter03) could only have movement on Z.
Now with the model i have i got movement on Z and X.
Ok been trying some techniques using the information in the post of msteele.
Added a path to the last bone and moved the path around and got great control now.
Put I’m not sure that this is the right way.
So please take a look and tell me where I’m right or wrong and where i can in prove myself
solved.blend (404 KB)
Here we go (file attached, text also in file)
Grab Bone.002 now and check it out.
Howto:
Delete Bone.003
Select Bone.002
ALT+P > Clear Parent
ALT+P > Disconnect Bone
select Bone.002 whereever it is now first then shiftselect Bone.001
CTRL+I > add IK to active bone
orient Bone.002 as you like it in our case localY axis up.
(select bone and press ALT+R and clear its rotation should do that)
Select Bone.002 shift+alt+C and add a Limit Location constraint.
change the CSpace to be evaluated in local space.
so in local space the Bone.002 is at X:0, Y:0, Z:0 simply XYZ
are local zero at the position we added the constraint at.
Now limit local minX/maxX to 0 and local minZ/maxZ to zero and
leave local minY/maxY be, because thats the axis you want the bone
move along. You will still be able to rotate the Bone.002.
Thats it.
hth
Thanks Arexma
Now i have full control over the hole model
Now just 1 more thing.
The arm is going to pick up a ball and play with it.
How do i get the ball to follow the arm without adding every key by hand.
So the storyboard is 
Ball is on the ground.
Claw (arm) moves down to pick up the ball.
The claw drops the ball from a high level.
use a CopyLoc constraint on a bone where the ball is attached to.
Then you animate the intensity of the the constraint on the bone for the ball.
Copy Location copies one bones base to the other bones base. the tip can aim wherever it likes, but there is a slider to where you can choose if you want to evaluate the tip or the tail.
So you have the ball with a bone, with a CopyLoc constraint and the bone at the claw as actor for the constraint. The Influence slider should be at 0
when you move the claw down to the ball, set the influence to 1 and the bone of the ball will follow the bone of the claw.
try disconnecting the bone from the parent. Disable the Con button in the armautre edit