I’ve got a job to do that involves rigging a motorbike’s suspension, it doesn’t have to be dynamic, keyframed movement is fine.
However, I’m not sure how best to do it and wondering if anyone could point me to a tutorial or specific method?
I can’t post a picture of the model as it belongs to a client, but can post a similar looking setup (pic attached).
It’s a swingarm front suspension, and as the wheel moves up, the spring and dampener compress and move upwards slightly with an anchor point on the bike’s body.
Is there a way I can anchor the spring and dampener to the body, and still have them attached to the front swingarm so they tilt upwards and compress?
Was a bit stumped on what sort of rig to try and build, most tutorials I could find on suspension are dynamic rigs which seemed a bit complex for this, I just need a keyframed rig where the wheel and suspension move up and down.
If you have everything modeled already, except for the shock-absorber unit, it needs three parts.
In a nutshell:
The oil/air-cylinder-part is attached on one side of the “fork” and uses the other Null as a target while having an up-Vector.
The other part, the tube/cylinder works oppositely, also with a target and up vector.
Both Nulls’ distance determines the Springs length.
Since you mentioned that all parts are given, here is a way to use even the spring (while its change is kind of limited, as the whole object is scaled)
It seems like you got all you need for this part of the project.
Yes, if the idea would have been to make a part that can be implemented on any scale, I would have included a slider to do so. Which, in return, would have significantly increased the complexity of the rig. This was not my target here.
I primarily share ideas and knowledge here, and I prefer to keep it simple (if possible), as you can see with the second file.
Having said that:
The simple reason for the problem is that the measurements are done after the scale, so the result of the distance is given to the Helix, and then this Helix is scaled again. A scaleable set up needs to care about this.
Here is an example that has the scale option included, move the HUD-slider https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/1hRyTw2bpm1aIdlaKdZfrusmGTwnSEE2c1q4ltGYfJW
I’ve downloaded it and will have a look, thanks a lot.
I’m not experience with rigging, I mainly do product and archviz where animating the camera and perhaps a few simple product elements is the only animation required, it’s mostly shader work and lighting etc.
But sometimes a client asks for something I haven’t done before, so thanks a lot for the help.
Yes, I can see that this is a different work compared to your primary area. Again, my idea is to get you the skills to feel comfortable, and I understand that this was something different.
If you have a similar case, you can share the parts needed of the model privately with me, and I will discuss here only my scene-parts, keeping it secure. As usual, scene files are the base of a good exchange here.