topic Re: wire parameters in 3ds Max Animation and Rigging Forum

wire parameters

flyff_saak — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 12:23:37 GMT

I have been searching the internet for a tutorial that would help me but I haven't found any

so I figured I would test my luck here.

what I want to do is to have the upper model rotate and the lower models going up and down depending on the thickness of the upper model.

I am hoping this is possible with wire parameters so that I don't have to do this manually each rotation but I cant figure out how to do it could anyone help me please?

Re: wire parameters

domo.spaji — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 14:30:04 GMT

What kind of machinery are you after?

Do you even have thickness parameter in the "upper model"?

Re: wire parameters

flyff_saak — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 15:09:01 GMT

here is a quick gif of what I want to achieve.

I made this one quickly manually so it ain't perfect but it illustrates what I want.

but doing it manually takes a lot of time so I was wondering if I could somehow do this with constrains or something.

basically I want to be able to just rotate the upper one, and the rest just follows

Re: wire parameters

domo.spaji — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 18:19:40 GMT

Doing it "manually" is fastest way for that animation.

And you already done it (you can polish it some more if needed).

There's no need for creating some rigging systems for every simple, repeating motions.

You may have some difficulties cause of default Automatic tangents here, if you switch 'em to Linear will be simpler.

Re: wire parameters

flyff_saak — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 19:09:03 GMT

sorry I should have been more clear about what I wanted to achieve

I have 3 of the things that are rotating and on each one there is 3 of the things that are going down, and that has to be in sync with other rotating things in my scene, I have used helpers with constrains on the other things.

Re: wire parameters

leeminardi — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 15:09:58 GMT

Essentially what you want to rig is a cam follower. The attached file is a model of a cam follower I rigged last year. I used the Ray-to-surface Position constraint to determine the contact between the cam and the follower. Rotate the object cam in the file to see the dummy move up and down along the cam profile.

For your model you should start by creating a spline than is offset from the cam profile by a distance equal to the radius of the cam follower wheel then extrude the offset spline into a surface that can be reference by the Ray-to-surface Position constraint. This will ensure that the center of the wheel is always the correct constant distance above the cam.

Re: wire parameters

flyff_saak — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:10:50 GMT

This looks like exactly what I was looking for 😄

I will try it out later Thank you so much 😄

Re: wire parameters

flyff_saak — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 13:31:34 GMT

It worked just as I wanted it to, I am only haveing problems makeing to follow the axies that I want it to, so it goes out of hole at the bottom

Re: wire parameters

leeminardi — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 13:58:45 GMT

Make sure that the Ray Cast Object is oriented such that its local x, y, or z axis is aligned with the centerline axis of the hole. Post a wireframe image showing the rig from an end view or post the Max file if you still have a question.

Re: wire parameters

flyff_saak — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:49:18 GMT

Awesome Thanks for all the help 😄