Autodesk Maya, driving animation clips from a control object?

dbarnes

I was wondering if anyone might be able to give me some pointers. I'm rigging an ethernet crimping tool which has a latch that drops and a lever that forms a ratchet to keep it closed.

I have both close and open animations manually keyed, which looks pretty good, but I'm struggling to figure out how I can drive both from the same control object.

I read about using Maya's Trax editor to setup clips and drive them from an expression, but I'm having difficulty figuring out the expression.

I'm also really unsure how an animator would want to animate the tool. I was thinking a nurbs control object using the rotate channel, but then it also needs to be able to pause to lock the latch on the teeth. Such as when the handle is released.

This is the very basic test scene I setup to try to wrap my head around it. There are 2 clips blending together in the Trax editor. The actual latch would have multiple teeth, but I wanted to keep it simple.


Thanks!

Alex_J

Would a set driven key suffice? You could have it be a parameter on some catchall global control or something for easy access by the animator?

you probably know more about this stuff than I do, I only mention this just in case i'm wrong

dbarnes

I had thought about it, but wasn't sure how to make it work both ways. I could do 2 sets of geometry, one that only closes and one that only opens, and then key them on and off.

Once the latch engages, it shouldn't allow the arm to rise, but that's also how it works in the real world. I'm not sure that would be the best control for an animator.

dbarnes

After playing with it a bit, I was able to get it behave the way I want using set driven keys then controlling the direction from an attribute on the control object. It works, but it requires manually keying the direction.

I think if I could work out an expression to drive the direction attribute, I'd be able to  automate it and only have to worry about the keying the rotation.