how would i go about rigging hydraulics?

[moose o death]

i've got the piston and the casing modelled with a bone attachment and an envelope each, but how would i go about parenting them to one another so the position of the effector controls the position of the other effector, logically i would assume you point the effector of one at the root of the other and visa versa, but no dice, xsi seems to shift the effectors into the other bones structure.

i'll try pointing the bones at the objects themselves as the centre is on the pivot points as well.

any help would save me some time on what appears to be something fairly trivial based on the lack of any other topics about this

[patrick.n]

You shouldn't need to do it with enveloping. Assuming each piece's centre is at its rotation point, just constrain-direction each piece to each other.

[moose o death]

oh ok, i'll give that a shot. thanks

that did the exact thing needed thanks, XSi's animation isn't as daunting as i initially thought this door has been relatively painless

[moose o death]

ok lets assume that i DO need to use bone animation to achieve this result, the intended target of this model is a game engine and i know it doesn't use constraints.

am i best just keyframing the bone positions with the door rotation to get the result i want? the latch moves with the door perfectly based on nothing more than being parented to it.

but the constrain direction command doesn't seem to work when exported using FBX. and if it doesn't work in FBX it certainly wont work when i convert it to GMF.

[moose o death]

for the next poor bastard who tries to do this for something OTHER Than XSi's internal structure.

rig the bones so the root is at the pivot, the effector is at the end of the piston, PARENT the root to the control object, in my case a door. constrain the effector to the opposing bones root.

this will not work when exported either, what you need to do now is key every frame so the bone positions are recorded. this was the only way i got this to work.

[vmp]

if you use constraints you need to bake your keyframes out before exporting(plot)
arthur

[moose o death]

is that a function i can use, i don't need to press -> K -> k -> k for 125 frames?

[vmp]

if you switch to the animation tab, go to the tools section on the right and you will see a plot button just select your objects that havethe animation and choose one of the options in the plot menu
arthur

[moose o death]

that'll be a time saver thanks

[vmp]

i said right side but i meant left
arthur