How do I link bones from different bone layer?

[keepfungus]

Hi everybody,
I'm going crazy. Is there any way to constrain (and animate this constrain) a bone to another bone in a different bone layer?
I have a rigged character and a rigged bicycle. Obviously I want the character's feet to follow the pedals. I'm I asking too much or do I miss something?

Keepfungus

[hayasidist]

one way to do this (I'm sure there are others!)

put your rigged bike and person layers in a third "control" bone layer and in that control layer have a smart bone that moves both the foot bone and the pedal bone in sync.

[Maestral]

While moisturizing the soil, you might want to take a look at this one as well


Just an opportunity to say once more - Thank you, Victor for being invaluable part of this forum.

[keepfungus]

Hi guys,
thanks for the advice but the problem still remains.
The character and the bicycle are in two different bone layers (separate rigs).
Any other advice?
Thanks

Keepfungus

[hayasidist]

er .. did you mean you want the bike between character legs? -- you could drop the bike bone layer into the person group at the right point and then add a smartbone to the person group?

[keepfungus]

I have a library where each AS file contains a rigged character or prop.
When I have to build the scene, I'd like to import my two rigged AS files (a biped and a bike) and constrain the foot to the pedals. That's all.
So far, the only way I found to do it is copy and paste the biped's bones into the bike's layer and re-bind every point once again. I honestly want to avoid to do it.
Please, give me the easiest solution. I' can't believe there's no way to parent two bones coming from two different bone layers.

[Víctor Paredes]

I have a library where each AS file contains a rigged character or prop.
When I have to build the scene, I'd like to import my two rigged AS files (a biped and a bike) and constrain the foot to the pedals. That's all.
So far, the only way I found to do it is copy and paste the biped's bones into the bike's layer and re-bind every point once again. I honestly want to avoid to do it.
Please, give me the easiest solution. I' can't believe there's no way to parent two bones coming from two different bone layers.

I''m sorry, but there is no official way to do that. Bones layer are independent to each other.
So, for your case, I think the best solution is to mix both rigs into one. Also, you could put the character bone layer inside the bike bone layer and bind it to a bone. Then you should just add the pedal elements to the character. It's hard to explain and probably sounds more difficult to do than it actually is.

I remember there's an old script which allowed to control bones from one layer to another. Maybe that can help you in the future, but things can become tricky with the script search, update and implementation on your project.

[jahnocli]

Here's how I'd do it. The bike, and the character's near leg and arm would all be in one bone rig. The rest of the character would be in its own bone rig behind the bike. You could mess around with target bones at the hips and shoulders, but I'd just try and match the near limbs to the rest of the body in the animation. Nice and simple.

[hayasidist]

or ...

Start with:

Master Bone layer (new)
> character rig
> bike rig


1: in Master Bone define SB to control the interaction of character and bike -- for now forget the fact that there are elements of bike that actually belong in front of elements of character

2: animate!

3: make a copy by reference of character rig and place it behind bike like this:

Master Bone layer
> character rig (master)
> bike rig
> copy by reference of character rig

4: turn off "behind the bike" fills / strokes in character rig (master) << Animatable if necessary by (step interp) setting alpha to zero rather than just unchecking the stroke / fill checkboxes!
5: turn off the "in front of the bike" fills / strokes in character rig (copy by ref)

[keepfungus]

Thanks to all of you guys.
Since it seems there is no a practical solution to the problem, I guess there's no other way than rebuild a new bone layer made of biped+bike ( ).
I'll wait for the new version of AS in which I'm sure it will be implemented the possibility to constrain parts of different layer of any kind to each other. This is a fundamental function that THERE MUST BE! because otherwise no interactions between characters are possible, thus precluding the possibility of animating.
I'll post my suggestions in the proper section of the forum.
Thanks again to all.

[slowtiger]

No, it's not a "must be".

Animation is not the real world. In reality, characters and objects exist as complete entities which can interact wich each other. In animation, everything only exists as much as it must be visible inside a scene. Relations between objects don't have to reflect real life, they only need to look real enough. It's the dfference between CAD and CGI.

[hayasidist]

agreeing with SlowTiger ... my own approach is that I don't have a rig for a character (or prop) that will work in all situations - I reuse as much of the vector artwork as possible and then adapt if necessary and rig that for the shot. For example, if I want an extreme closeup of fingers tapping on a keyboard then I don't have the whole character drawn and rigged to enable that. I'll potentially have many rigs of the same character in one animation - because that's quicker and easier than designing and building the "rig that will do everything" then realising part way through the project that it still needs something else.

[keepfungus]

Reality...? Entities...? Real life...?
Sorry, I truly don't know what you are talking about but I challenge any animator to say that a parent between different bone layers wouldn't be more than useful.

[peter wassink]

Reality...? Entities...? Real life...?
Sorry, I truly don't know what you are talking about but I challenge any animator to say that a parent between different bone layers wouldn't be more than useful.

ha,
i second that.

i need a character to stand on top of another.
what i learn from this thread is that currently i'll need to build a new rig consisting of the two characters.
it would be so nice if for instance target bones could be used to connect different rigs to one-another.
that way i only need to connect the two feet target bones of the top character to the shoulderbones of the second character
which could be less then two minutes of work
instead of building a new two character rig which is at least 2 hours work if not more.....

so it comes pretty close to a "must be" in my opinion.

Al this i'm saying while still hoping someone has a trick for me
but its either spending two hours rigging (at least ... i have pretty complex characters) or two hours frame by frame target bone animating...
both not very apealing

[chucky]

I had to do some bike stuff in Moho a few years back, back then it was so difficult that I actually did it in 3d with a toon render (minus the head) and imported the render and stuck my Moho head on the body using tracking.
I think it would be much easier now, but you do have to have all bones in the same layer to work... It would be great to see this change in time ( maybe a feature to have shared targets- sounds pretty hard).