Animating giant slingshot
 

Hey forum, I landed this job at an adrenaline ride in town which basically means sitting around waiting for a customer to send up into the air in a giant slingshot (it's not legal suicide, you get strapped in). I bought a new laptop and Maya 8.5 to get into modeling again and have been building a polygon model of the ride and its surroundings.

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/3015/ridezs5.png
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/7169/ride2hg2.png

Since it's come along kind of well and accurate to the actual place I decided I wanted to apply some animation to the slingshot itself. The ride is powered by a winch that draws the ropes in underneath and creates massive tension on the chords while the tubular chair is being held back by a metallic pin insert. When tension is full the pin releases and the ride is sent high into the air at a fast speed and bounces around like crazy... Like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg12RQ83fjE

It's been a while since I rigged a character, and I wanted to know what the best way to rig it would be. Do I use a whole lot of joints rooting to the middle and set the stats to calibrate some tension?

Much appreciation to help X)

Rollie

nice model :) but why is the purple frame floating?

well i'm not gonna be able to answer your question about rigging because i'm too sleepy to figure out what you just asked

but i saw the picture and the telephone booth and i was like 'hey thats what you see over here' and sure enough you're in Wellington

man... isn't that a real boring job? no one ever comes to those things... well not in Auckland anyway :confused:

Ha sweet, a kiwi! Yeah that's the Wellington branch of those rides. No-one really goes on it except when there's a big rugby game or event or the nightlife is active.

Anyway, the towers are floating over each other because they don't actually touch. There's bolt-fastened supports in between, but that's just one of the many smaller details that I'm going to add, then texture and rig.

Anyway, the question I'm asking is how to rig the elastic so that when the rope glides through the pully and pulls on the cords it is attached to and creates X amount of tension then releases, it will send the capsule seat into the air at a speed of roughly 130kmp/h.

I understand the rigging process and painting skin weights, but I'm not sure what kind of binding I'll need, how to adjust weight and speed, and some other basic things. Once I know those I'll be able to figure my own thing out, I just never got a chance to practice animation in Maya while I learning amongst teachers.

Though I don't fully understand what exactly you need, the first thing that came to mind is set driven keys (well a tleast on a few things).

nice. are u going to animate it? and if u are can u make one with the line brokes? hehe
Btw whats yours laptop specification?

haha, evil :lmao:


rollie, are you asking for this to be all automatic? so just like haev a set driven key to release the thing and it fires up by itself?

AH! I think that's what I was trying to remember. My teacher showed me how to make the movement of one object determine the movement of another, by making a pod racer engine set that is manipulated by the pilot seat model.

Yeah so I'm not looking at replicating the function just yet as I haven't built the winch that winds it up underneath, and if I make it wrap a cord around it I will need a shit tonne of divisions and IK joints. No. lol.

Hmm here's a YouTube of the one I actually work at, so you get an idea of the process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CcJAZ898Dw&NR=1

You see, the pin slides in and pinches the ride, and then as the cords pull, the ride is tilted back because it's torn between the inertia of the pin and the elastic of the cords, lifting the rest of the ride up and tilting it. THen as the cords stretch they near the top of the towers and nest into a port when they reach maximum stretch. At that point it's released and BAM. So I'm looking to:

confine the capsule ride to the ground and then remove that rule as soon as the cords touch the very top, and then send it rocketing about 10 metres past the towers. I just need to know the names of some of the actions to be used.

well Evil is my middle name