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# 1 31-10-2003 , 10:30 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2003
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How to Rig Gun Holster

I am trying to figure out a good way to rig a gun holster. The holster goes to the mid section of his thigh. I would love to make it move when his leg moves to the side but still keep control over it in case I want to animate more movement by hand. Of course I do want the holster to react accordingly to the movement of the leg. The holster is a three piece object, a leather strap that connects to a metal clasp and the clasp connects to the holster. The ideas I have been experimenting with are,
I used bones to connect all of the objects, about 6 bones inside the leather strap, a bone for the metal clasp, and a bone for the holster. I used an IK solution for the bones so that the leather strap deforms properly. Then I went ahead and parent constrained the IK to the leg, I went ahead and turned off some of the translations on the parent. That in turn allows the leg to move forward and not move the holster. But with that setup I don’t get realistic movement, I get some movement and I can keyframe the rest to make it look okay but I would like it to be more dynamic. I have also played around with some rigid bodies but haven’t gotten any results with that.
Has anyone done a scabbard for a sword that moves with the character, if so that solution would maybe help? If anyone has an idea on how to rig that properly that would be great. Thanks in advance.

# 2 01-11-2003 , 05:03 PM
mtmckinley's Avatar
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Seattle, WA
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I would probably group the holster to itself and parent the group to the leg. That way, the group will drive the overall motion of the holster, yet you'd still be able to animate the holster object inside the group node seperatly like you'd want.

# 3 01-11-2003 , 05:17 PM
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I appreciate your reply. I also have been playing around with the idea of writing an expression. I guess what I am really after is getting believable holster animation without having to do a whole lot of secondary animation on it but if I want to do some adjustments that I could. For some reason this has me going in a loop and I can't figure out for the live of me how to rig it. I figured someone has done a sword scabbard that moves with the body in a believable way, I figured I could try using that solution.

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