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.
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.
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
Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon
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.
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.
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...
