Animating a trunk
 

Hi everyone.

I have built this little dude, and have made him with a trunk. I want the trunk to flop down and act like it was a proper trunk. He is ready for animation with all his joints. But i would rather not use joints for his trunk. I would like it to behave natrualy. Any idea how i could animate it without useing joints?
check the pic if your confused

Thanks Heaps

Nick:D

Turn the trunk into a softbody - making sure to keep and hide the original. Then set the original as the goal and paint weights. Should do the trick.

oh of course.. ahh man i should have thought of that. Thanks thats what i will try!

hmm i have del, the trunk, and made a new softbody trunk, but i cant get the soft body to attach to the poly. I tried useing a cluster but that didnt work. Do you know of a way to attach a softbody to a poly?

I think using bones would work quite well.

I'm not a soft-body expert, but I don't think you can attach a softbody to another object. I think you'd want to duplicate the entire body and make all of it rigid except for the trunk. I'm not sure how rigging might be affected by that, though.

I dont have Maya in front of me, so cannot try this, but can you not parent the softbody to the poly?

nope i tried that, and the trunk just falls away like its not even attached when i add some gravity. thanks for the replys though

you need to paint some weights on the trunk. try 1's up at the top.. and like a .5 lower. try to twist the original so that the trunk is in a more natrual position. you might also need to use some springs to keep it from falling to the flore.

thanks pony. I have it working well, I ended up useing about ten joints along the trunk. Then used a IK spline handle and attached a cluster to the vertex. I parented the cluster to a nurb sphere, then then attached another nurbs sphere to that, with a spring. It worked really well. This way i can control it with gravity and such. I had no luck with the soft body.. Thanks for all the replys