So, how do I do it? I've looked for tutorials to rig landing gear and the closest I've come is robotic arms. Maybe that'll work, but I haven't figured it out yet.
If you look at the attached pic I drew a VERY crude diagram of the gear I'm talking about. A few things of note: the purple circle is the main pivot point, the light blue circle is a sliding pivot the retracts down the green track as the gear retracts and the yellow block is the landing pad.
I feel like I'm missing something really simple, but I am getting so aggravated I'm about to throw my computer through the window.
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or what you could do, is replace that sliding mini-leg, with a "gear"
hope this helps a little
Look it up in the max help, theres a pretty good guide that should get you started
You'd end up with something like this...
When blue pivot is (here), the leg should be (there).
When blue pivot is (there), the leg should be (here).
Then you can move the blue pivot (or use a slider object, or whatever) to blend between these states.
I learned about this after looking at madkoifish's release shuttle mesh. Double thanks to MKF!
Hope I didn't confuse you too much, can't think straight...need to sleep :P
I'd probably do something like set up a skeleton for the main part of the leg, constrain orient the foot so that it remains flat, make another chain for the piston assembly and make the end of it a child of the main leg's root bone, and use an IK leg-type solver to make it bend...
But I prefer Melak's way.
3ds max 9 mechancial rig? - Threedy Forums
If you apply the same principle then it should work nicely
DragonFly Landing Gear
If you use the reaction manager to define two (or more) states, you just need to move them one time (or more) and can control it by a simple slider in your viewport.
IMHO it's a very elegant solution, also easy to set up.
That, and I'm having issues with the Reaction Manager in Max.
Alright, in the attached pic you can see (somewhat) the motion I'm going for. There may or may not be a piston later on, but that doesn't really matter as it's really easy to get those linked up. The goal is to attach a controller to the purple hardpoint that I can rotate causing the master link to rotate upward thereby pulling the slave link in which will pull the main gear leg in around the axis of the red hardpoint. Ideally, I'd like to use bones with an IK chain. It seems to be the simplest and most efficient method I've found online. My problem with that is when I rig the bones and add the IK chain I can rotate the master link but as soon as I get about 20* of rotation the rest of the bones start rotating in different axes.
gearrig.png
If the Reaction Manager is really easy to use and I'm just being a dunce I'll use it, but I'll need a good walkthrough on how to do it.