Rigging a Character With a Weapon

Lord McMutton

I've got a character that's ready to be rigged. He's got a sheathed sword on his hip, and only draws it when he attacks. So how do I rig him so that the weapon can move between the scabbard and his hand?

MoP

What application?

In Maya, use a Parent Constraint and set the targets as the scabbard and the hand - then you can keyframe the weight between each target to control what's driving it.

In Max, use a Link Constraint, add the scabbard and hand as targets, and add key frame numbers then set the weight per frame.

Mark Dygert

Depends on a lot of things.
How close the camera is?
How fast the action is?
Does it ever change speed or is it always a quick action?
How complex the rig can be and what app are you using?

Without knowing those specifics you could:
Hide the hilt and un-hide the sword in his hand as he draws it out.
OR
You could probably put a look-at constraint on the scabbard so it looks at the hand as its being drawn out. Would probably need another bone for the sword following the hand, but looking at the scabbard bone. Or a bone following the scabbard since two bones can't look at each other.

Lord McMutton

Eh, I use Truespace. I don't think it has that kinda stuff. I may be able to have two states that I can switch between during the animation: One with the sword weighed to the hip, and one with it weighed to the hand. Or maybe a bone from the hand attached to a bone going along the sword.

Flynny

Truespace is quite poor but heres an old trick you can probaly do..

Have 2 weapons on the character boned and weighted but animate the visibility of them (1 in hand and 1 in sheath) thats probaly as far as yu can go but it is the simplest.

Valandar

Yeah, back in Freedom Force, multiple copies of a weapon were used. Since the engine didn't support animated visibility, it was scaled instead over the course of a frame. The 'hidden' one was at 1/1000 scale or so, and the 'visible' one was at full scale. When the hand was in proper position, they both swapped proportions, and thus the sword, gun, staff, or whatever seemed to smoothly switch parenting.

Taylor Hood

Calagari Truespace? ..............wow.

Seaseme

I didn't even know Truespace still existed..

Mark Dygert

All great, simple, suggestions. Hopefully Truespace can get that done, but I have to share my amazement that Truespace is being used... wow.

Taylor Hood

I remember using Truespace when I saw some kind of promo tutorial feature video for it. Badk when I never even experienced drawing anything 3D onto a viewport. Lol.

I wonder.. how many people use that?