Would like rigid body constraints to follow the object

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

Hello everyone

I’m trying to create an animation of a 4-wheel drive vehicle complete with suspension etc.

I’ve made the rig, and it involves motors, hinges, springs and what not. It works just fine.

However - when it moves - the constraints themselves (ie, their axes as depicted in normal view) stay fixed, and dotted lines stretch out to the vehicle as it moves away.

How do attach the constraints to the object being constrained? I tried child-of but had troubles. Btw the rig works fine, it just stretches out these dotted lines wherever it goes and I’d expect there would be a way to have everything move with the object. I figure the answer is related to local vs. global coordinates but can’t seem to find the trick I need here.

thanks much for any inputs.

Matt

#2

Your rig works, the dotted lines serve no purpose, so… Easy solution: In the Properties shelf (a.k.a. N-panel), disable the “Relationship lines” in the Display panel.

If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it… and hide the ugly bits under a nice rug. :smiley:

#3

or move all the constraints to a different layer… problem solved, the important part is, all the constraints are assigned and computed at frame 1, so any offset movement is irrelevant… Thats not to say you cant just parent the constraint objects like any other object… it just means its pretty pointless doing this. personally I would parent the whole rig ei, constraints, rigid body, and armatures, and any meshes to a single empty, just makes it easier to place it and relocate the whole setup in one fell swoop

#4

Thanks you guys. Both of those worked. Also I went back and carefully paid attention to orientation and applied scale/rot (using alt-A) then I was able to parent the working parts to one single part.

Now all is well. Project is going fine now - will post .blends when it’s worthy of such.