Elbow trouble...

[ScooterD76]

Hey all, back into my CH project and really getting the hang of things...

Doing position to position animation with the arms and it is going well, but Im having trouble getting the elbow to bend in the desired direction. Puppet is full frontal so elbows can be either direction. However getting an arm to reverse direction, ( swing from raised hand position, to arm hanging to side, elbow out ) has got me completely stumped. I can get it ready for record but afterwards it doesnt make the full swing in playback...

Screenshot of my setup, any tips or tweaks would be much appreciated. ( I'm looking at you, alank99101739 lol )

* it should be noted I am not positioning the arms live, im recording them in different positions and tweening between them

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

Hi ScooterD! Sorry, been busy with other things recently.

In v1.5 I used to put a dragger on the elbow to help the arm go the right way. It was a bit painful, but it worked.

There is the IK-Arm behavior in 2.0 now. If you tag the arm up correctly, it controls which way the elbow will bend. But if in one recording you want the arm going different directions, I discovered it can be useful to record values like the strength setting - it controls which way the arm bends a bit. Try fiddling with the settings, then record the value you want (can do it with blends etc as well). Its not perfect, but is easier than dragging the elbows and trying to keep the arm look natural.

[ScooterD76]

Thanks! I'll try these!

[Octobee5]

I have my elbows bending the right way but when I try to move both arms at a time from a down position upward (using a dragger on right arm) my elbows bend inward towards the body and it looks very awkward. Is there away to keep the elbows from moving inward so much?? 😞

[TheOriginalGC]

Are you using the Limb IK behavior? It has several settings that can help you limit the strength of the bend as well as adjust the threshold by which the elbow flips. By default, the bend strength is at 90% and the flip threshold is at 0.

[alank99101739]

Nice animation! The body movement, arm movements, eyes - it really works well!

How did you do the shadow? AE? Or did you do that in CH as well?

[ScooterD76]

Thanks

Background and shadow are AE