Lamp animate

[james182]

how would i animate and rig my lamp to work properly ????
[pixar style]

[Buzzy]

ok....here's how I would rig it....first here's a pic of the rig as I made it in 3dsmax

Now, both upper and lower sections of the arm are identical, so lets just look at the bottom one and you can just copy it for the top part. First I created the 3-bone chain on the left, bent like a backward '7'. Then I created the second chain on the right which is a straight 2-bone chain. Now its important that this second chain meet 2 requirements - first, the larger bone has to be parallel with the corresponding bone in the first chain, and second, the small tip bones of each chain must have their pivot points at the exact same coordinates (otherwise things will float and drift apart a little). Now, In the left chain, make 2 HI IK solvers, one at each joint (the crosses in the pic). Ok, now create a base (in this case, just a point helper) and link the larger bones in each chain to this base. Now, apply an orientation constraint to the large bone on the right, orienting it to the large bone on the left. Then, link the second IK goal in the left chain to the small tip bone of the right chain (they should line up like in the picture). Make sure you do it in this order... applying the orientation last really screws things up. Hopefully you're not too confused. This is almost creating a loop, so 3dsmax occasionally will do something funky with it, but it seems to work anyway. To control the this mess, all you do is move the first IK goal (the one on the left). To make the upper section of the arm, I just copied the whole thing and linked its base to the 'cross-member' bone in the bottom part of the arm. If you're confused about any part of this, lemme know.

[Buzzy]

Oh, and as far as animating it "pixar style" as you put it, just remember that Luxo was originally animated by John Lasseter and later by Rich Quade.... so you've got VERY large shoes to fill But seriously, I'd like to see you animate this little guy, so keep us posted. Best of luck

[james182]

im confused...... can you post the max file for me to look at to understand better?...
thanks.

[Buzzy]

The max file is HERE

I colored and labelled it to make it a little easier to decipher. When you open it, it may look like a mess, but if you move the bottom left IK goal around, it should reset itself (this is what I mean when I said 3ds doesn't seem to like it 100%... but it works fine after it resets itself...I'd imagine this problem would go away if you started keyframing it)