Binding a point on one layer to a spot on another layer

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JCook
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 1:28 pm
Location: Cape Cod, MA

Binding a point on one layer to a spot on another layer

Post by JCook »

This is a little hard to describe. I'm doing an animation of an ocean mooring that has a buoy on the surface of the ocean, a long cable (actually called a stretch hose) that is attached to the buoy and also attached at the other end to an anchor on the bottom of the ocean. The buoy moves up and down and sideways with the waves, and the stretch hose that is attached to it goes with it, of course, and stretches and contracts as the buoy goes up and down. I need to demonstrate this in the animation.

So, I first tried using bones, but they won't stretch up and down. The cable is on a vector layer, just a line with a number of points and the buoy is an image on an image layer. I'm trying to find a way to make the topmost point on the vector layer attach itself to a certain point on the image layer of the buoy so it will look like it's attached to the bottom of the buoy (which, of course, it is in real life). So as I animate the buoy with the waves I want the end of the stretch hose to go exactly with it, and bend and stretch as necessary. Basically I have three layers: an image layer of the buoy, a vector layer of the stretch hose, and another image layer of the bottom anchor.

Any ideas on how to do this?

thanks,
Jack
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synthsin75
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Re: Binding a point on one layer to a spot on another layer

Post by synthsin75 »

Bind both the image layer and point to a bone and animate the bone.

Make a bone chain for the hose, make the image/point bound bone the target of the top of the chain, and increase the Maximum IK Stretching for the whole chain.
JCook
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 1:28 pm
Location: Cape Cod, MA

Re: Binding a point on one layer to a spot on another layer

Post by JCook »

Thanks, Synthesin, that worked once I figured it out.

Jack
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