Animating Hydraulic Pistons

Weirdboy

I have a model I'm working on of an AA gun that will move up and down with the aid of a hydraulic piston that I have yet to add into the model. I know very little about animating. What is the best way to get the desired result?

erroldynamic

There's some vids on youtube that might help: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0zhIOU3fDg"]3D Studio Max - Rig an Hydraulic Piston - YouTube[/ame]

Rick Stirling

2 helper bones and lookat constraints (or 4 to prevent cyclic dependancies).

One bone at the ene of the cylinder, one at the end of the ram. The ram bone looks at the cylinder bone and the cylinder bone looks at the ram bone. 100$ skinning of each section to its own bone.

Weirdboy

Rick Stirling wrote: »

cyclic dependancies

What's that?

Rion411 wrote: »

There's some vids on youtube that might help: 3D Studio Max - Rig an Hydraulic Piston - YouTube

I had seen that video before a year or so back, thanks for reminding me of it. It really helped. Do you guys know how to get rid of those blue lines in the viewport?

Thinking of removing the forward piston, what do you guys think?