drum pedal project
 

hello everyone,
I"m am about 6 months into maya now and am working on an idea for a double bass pedal for some drums. I have finished modeling the pedals and their heads as well as the chain. The polygonal chain is now ready for animation, but how do I give the chain the realistic type of movement to make it look like it is going along with the pedal but still swings a little on its own. In other words, how do I bring this chain to life. The chain is modeled after one on a pedal, and is similar to a bike chain.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.......
thanks a bunch.,.......

Animating the chain along the path would create the motion, and you could probably animate a lattice object on the motion path to create the swaying effect.

ok, I haven"t worked with lattices yet so i'll try that out......

One more thing, In the center of the chain, there is going to be a foot holder, pedal type thing, anyway, how can I attach it to the chain without having to change any keys, or are motion paths done with dynamics???

thanx

??
 

Ok, well i tried several ways to do this animation and nothing seems to work......

the curve is a U-shape like curve and the chain should go along the curve.......I can get the chain to go along the curve but not to deform to the curve......how do I do that?? I tried using tangent constraints and geometry constraints, that didn"t work.......
Then I put joints in the chain and skinned it, drew the curve made an IK Spline Handle and got the joints with the binded skin to attach and deform to the curve. Now my problem was animating it, I could make the deformation deform along the curve while it was moving up and down.

I have also tried using lattice and motion paths, but I couldn"t orient the chain to the curve with the right deformations......


can ANYONE help me?? I"m stuck......
any comment would help, thank you
bigbadbob

I can't picture exactly what you're trying to do but have you checked my createDynChain.mel? It may not be suitable as is but the setup may give you some ideas. Check it out at my site. Link in sig.

I took a look at your chains, I really like what you did, but my problem is the chain. Your chains are linked together, their actually several toruses that don't actually touch each other in the original state. my chain is made up of hinges, they all connect like on the chain of a bike, and I can't figure out how to connect different points of the chain. The top and bottom should both be connected to a drum pedal head, and the center of the joint should connect to a foot cup, kind of like on a saddle......then if possible i wanted to only have to move the foot cup up and down its motion path and have the chain dynamically move along with it driving the drum pedal heads to actually hit the drum.......??? any ideas??....