AE Expression for extending mechanical arm?

[Matt_Birkinshaw]

Hello

I am pretty sure you can do this but I cant make it work....

Basically I want to make a mechanical extension arm kind of like this

But without the boxing glove....

I have been messing around with Pickwicking the rotation to various other elements rotations and parenting all the seperate elements together

but cant seem to make it work, any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Matt

[Todd_Kopriva]

That's a rather broad question. It'll be easier to help you if you ask specific questions and show what you've tried already.

[Matt_Birkinshaw]

Oh I didn't think it was that broad a question?.... There is an image of the type of mechanism I would like to animate.

But here goes.... I would like to take a collection of solids and link them with expressions so that I can simply rotate one pivot point on one of the solids and the others will pivot and move position (I guess) with it, in the same fashion as the earlier attached picture with the boxing glove.

It is quite hard to explain it any other way.

Thanks though.

Matt

[Dan Ebberts]

Assuming you have all the pieces parented together in two chains where the first layer in each chain has the anchor point in the middle, the others have the anchor point where they attach to their parent, and one chain is parented to the the other, the two pieces that attach to the main parent get this:

-parent.rotation*2;

everybody else gets this:

-parent.rotation

Dan