Floor effect suggestion

Raven-Productions · Post by **Raven-Productions** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 11:55 am

For the next realease of Blender - would it be possible for a FLOOR EFFECT to be implemented? In other words, an effect (applable to the intended floor surface) in which any Armature that comes into contact with it to be effected.

Say you want to have a character's armature to walk across a given surface - what the FLOOR effect would do would be to change the bone's (the ones in the foot in particular) to rotate so that they are parallel to the floor. This would save valuable time and would help avoid the "floating walker" syndrome.

what'd you think?

dmoc · Post by **dmoc** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 1:27 pm

Have you checked on Elysiun? I seem to recall something about this.

harkyman · Post by **harkyman** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 5:58 pm

A long time ago, I wrote a new constraint type that did something like that. You entered a target object in the constraint, and it prevented the bone (or whatever) from going below the object. To get it to work properly you had to apply it to both the toe and heel of the foot, but it worked. It was never accepted into the main release, though, so no one ever got to use it.

I'm hoping that after the animation refactor, we'll have some better tools like this.

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 10:31 am

harkyman wrote:A long time ago, I wrote a new constraint type that did something like that. You entered a target object in the constraint, and it prevented the bone (or whatever) from going below the object. To get it to work properly you had to apply it to both the toe and heel of the foot, but it worked. It was never accepted into the main release, though, so no one ever got to use it.

Yeah, sorry for that, the patch is still sitting on my desk.

Martin

oin · Post by **oin** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 8:20 pm

"though, so no one ever got to use it. "

I did use it.(though prefering joint pinning)

harkyman · Post by **harkyman** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 3:34 am

I'm working on getting the sources to compile on OS X. Once I get that going, I'll be recoding the Floor Constraint (it's actually a Min/Max constraint) and resubmitting it. Getting the sources to compile is the though part. I'll probably be able to write the constraint in an hour or two once I get it going.

You attach the constraint to a particular bone, then point it at an object (most likely an empty). You click on X,Y or Z, and on Min or Max. If you choose, say, Z and Min, then your bone will not go below the Z value of the chosen empty. The effect would be one of hitting a floor. Or, you could choose X and Max, meaning the your bone would never pass to the right of the empty.

oin · Post by **oin** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 12:07 pm

x... interesting, crashing against a wall?

harkyman · Post by **harkyman** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 2:57 pm

Yeah - you could apply Max X constraints to several key joints, then pull your guy into a wall. Smash.

harkyman · Post by **harkyman** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 6:25 pm

OS X was driving me nutz, so I reverted back to compiling on Windows. Less convenient and much slower machine, but at least it compiles. I'll work on the constraint this afternoon, unless things go totally crazy here.

oin · Post by **oin** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 10:56 pm

cool thing, I liked that constraint you made...and am on windows, lately...

harkyman · Post by **harkyman** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:35 pm

Constraint written and new post with link to Windows .exe and patch made in Testing Builds...

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 2784#42784

JoOngle · Post by **JoOngle** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 4:16 pm

I think this constraint will be a very useful addition to Blender's Animation toolbox.

It'll be even more useful if it was "meshable"....where it was possible to
set a mesh as a collision "grid" sort of...

Then it would be possible to make "staircases and we could have
auto-snapping limits where if the bones came close enough....it would
auto-align/snap to grid.

Actually...just several addable grids would do the trick alone....no
need for collision meshes although it'll be preferable, but really...