Mecanical arm w/ rotating base
 

I'm trying (very hard!!) to make a mecanical arm/industrial robot-thingy with the base rotating horisontally, and the other joints rotating vertically.

I tried disabling the freedom of movement for all but the horisontal plane on joint1 only to find out that these settings seems to be inherited by all the other joints.

Then I tried using aim constraint to make the base point/rotate according to the position of a locator on the "ground" wich in turn was point-constrained to the IK handle, with the ...(cant remeber)... Y axis....? connection removed, so that it would always position itself on the "ground" below the IK handle.
This is working (semi) fine. The problem starts when I want the robot (on wich the arm is connected) to move around, and it is tilted. Then the base aim locator remains at the "ground" plane and the base is rotated in a strange way...


The real question is... Is there a way to make the base joint NOT behave like a ball-joint without screwing up the rest of the joint-chain?

-Norleif-

Can you post a few pics so I can get a better look at what you want to do? Its a little hard to figure out with out seeing something.


Kurt

Hand-Drawing ;)
 

I Made a hand-drawing of what I want to achive. It's not so much for the model, but more for the consept. Anyways.. Here goes.

I'm not sure if the picture is visible. Was'nt in the preview...?

Ok I played with you picture a bit hopefully you can follow it.

You should be able to just parent your geometry, but I would have to see a picture, its better than trying to get the AIM constrates working right.

Steps

1) Have your arm straight up

2) Pick joint 3 rotate it 90 degrees down than set perefered angle (right click on the joint)

3) Straighten up your arm again then add a ikSCsolver from joint 4 to joint 2

(Optional) depending on what you want the movement to be, you can set perefered on joint 2 as well.

That should do it. If you want to move the arm select the ik and test it, Just the joint 4 to 2 will move, If you want to rotate the base just select joint 1.

Hope that helps

picture

I get the idea, but it's no good if the IK handle is to folow a motion path.
As for the rig you described, it has only a 2-dimensional freedom of movement as far as the IK handle is concerned. The 3'rd dimension still depend on being operated "manually", like the hydraulic wrecking machine on Scrapheap Challenge (DiscoveryChannel).

If I try to attatch the IK-handle/EndEffector to a motion path.. The arm would bend unnaturally.


Is it really that hard to achive my goal in a simple manner in MAYA? The same rig is a piece of cake to set up in 3DSMax, but the IK in Max is somewhat "jumpy"...



Anyways.. I think I got a solution to the problem, but I can't try it out until later.