Rigging and Madness!!!

Xzeion

Ok Polycounters, I am in need of some very specific information about rigging in 3ds Max 2013.

I am working on a complex vehicle rig for my senior project and keep hitting this wall in the rigging process. I have uploaded my 3ds Max file here: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/NIdHSIlw1d/



Left = Good Right = Not Good







The rotation of the arm is controlled by a look at point. the circle is set to only inherit the z rotation of the look at and has the x and y wired to the cars GEO_GRP point. This all works fine while moving around the pich and roll control (blue circle above the car) but as soon as i rotate the root controller or cause any rotation because of the spline attachment it breaks horribly.
There is something very very basic about the rigging system in 3ds max that I am missing.

Please help me Polycount! Your my only hope!

Xzeion

Some other thoughts. The Purple GRP point underneath the car is lower on the hierarchy chain than the root controller. I think if i could get the wire parameter to look at the global rotation of the GRP point i would be set as I believe it is currently looking at some local variation. Help for that ???

Xzeion

After more thinking I need a way to add the global or world rotation of the point to the value of the local via the wire parameter box and it should all work.

Mrfred

try defining an upnode for RL_SUSLookat and the 4 other lookat.
Should fix what I see ( tire rotating and flipping !?)


edit: using VEH_Car_Roll_CTRL's axis as an upnode fixed it. I using the first thing I saw but you can use whatever you want.

Things to know about lookat: take your hand and point it like a gun ( index facing the front and thumb raised)
the index is the lookat and works with the 2 axis (but you're missing the roll ( the thumb in our case)) an upnode/upvector defines this. You can either ask the lookat to point the roll towards it or use his axis alignment(orientation)

In this case, you didn't specify any upnode( roll axis) and thats why it was breaking.

Xzeion

Thank you for the great reply! It was extremely helpful. I was totally missing that little detail.