Rope Arms?

[jameyc44619071]

I want my characters arms to essentially be ropes, where it is attached via a hinge to the shoulder and the hand, then I want to make the hand draggable. However, I made the hand independent and when I attach it with the hinge to the arm and I drag it, the hand just detaches from the arm.

[alank99101739]

Sounds painful!!

Could you provide a screenshot of the rigging?

That is rather funky however. So the hand is still attached to the arm (because when the arm swings the hand moves too).  The things I would be checking include: how is hand attached to arm? Is it “Auto” for the “Attach To” setting? If so, is the origin dragged over the arm? (Is the origin handle green indicating attachment?) Having such narrow arms I could imagine making this attachment a bit harder. And you checked that the hand is Hinge and not “Free”? What if you try Weld? Does it behave differently?

To me it looks like the hand is attached to the arm using “Free” which is why it moves freely separate to the Arm. But it is still related, which is why the arm moving still moves the hand.

Have you tried clicking the “refresh” button (the two arrows) at the bottom of the scene? Sometimes that helps clear things up when CH gets confused.

Oh, and have you tried attaching the dragger to the arm layer instead of the hand layer? Does that make a difference?

Just a few suggestions - sorry, don’t have my computer available to try it first sorry.

[jameyc44619071]

This what I have got right now.

[alank99101739]

That all seems logical. I don’t have my computer with me right now - one suggestion is to remove the dragger tag from the origin handle and add a new handle to the hand and tag that with dragger. Maybe dragging an origin moves the layer Like you see?

Another idea - tag the rope arm layer instead of the hand itself. I am sure that would work, but not sure why what you have already does not work. (These are just suggestions - I don’t know why what you see is happening - but I am curious to learn why.)

[jameyc44619071]

If I make a new draggable handle on the hand it just remains fixed to the arm and I stretch the hand out.

[alank99101739]

Here is a high quality artwork rope man. I am not happy with any of the legs, but it might be closer. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pa1L8IjLKwgE_Vhs91wv6m38WJKczDmt

Basically I attached independent arms to the body, then independent hands to the arms. The draggers have to go on the arms (not the hands) because the parent controls the child, the child does not control the hand.

The thing I was not happy with is when you grab a dragger, the place you grab seems to stay at the angle you grabbed it. So if the arms are hanging down and you grab them, the end of the arm will stay pointing down, which can result in the arm sticking out from the hand in funny directions. I put transparency on the hands so you can see.  There seems to be no "hinge" setting for draggers.

If you try the puppet, you will notice the different hands do slightly different things with rotation etc - I just tried a few different options.

The legs I tried to use magnets, but if you put a magnet on something it appears the dragger no longer works. So I could not work out how to get the legs have one end attach to the body, the other to a hand. As soon as I put the magnet on the hand, I could not drag it.

You cannot even use the Transform X/Y positon on the "right foot" to change its position. Magnets win! I was hoping magnets would allow a dragger on the foot to move it around,

(Oh, on the Dragger behavior, changing "After Move" to "Return to rest" is fun - try it and see what happens when you drag!)

Oh, DanTull​, I swap between record/stream and rig mode a few time without making changes and sometimes get JavaScript errors. I will try to repeat reliably. I forgot to take a screenshot. Refreshing the scene cleared the problem. But I also got this one: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YygxSIysy-drxakemNYUjWyeEYjD3CHI - Video: Ropes and strange magnet behavior - YouTube  (sorry, first half was not centered on screen right - skip forward to later part - no time to re-record just now)

[DanTull]

If I'm understanding the rigging right the problem is that the origin should be moved to the overlap between the arm and the body (it represents the attach point). Then you can add dragger handles to the hands and I think it'll move the way you intend.

DT

[alank99101739]

If you try the puppet I shared, if the dragger is on the independent hand with “hinge” etc to attach to the arm, the hand just drags away from the arm. They don’t stay connected. If its not independent, then its fine. I think this was the original problem reported and its easy to repeat.

if you put the dragger on the end of the arm that the hand attaches to then it works. You can get the hand to be free etc. The only problem I can see is when you use a dragger on the end of the arm, the rotation angle of the drag point does not change during the drag - dragging locks it down. So the arm has to twist and flex near the connection point (as in the screenshot above). It can end up with the arm pointing upwards from the hand rather than dangling as desired. I threw more dangles on the arm to help pull it downward.

It would be nice if the arm can be attached with hinge to the body, then the hand attached with hinge to the end of the arm, so the arm can dangle downwards naturally. The problem is only if you put the dragger on the independent hand layer, the arm does not stay attached to the hand - it pulls away. This is because the child layer does not affect the parent (I assume).

Magnets sounded like a good solution, except that when you put a magnet on a layer it appears to turn off any ability to drag or transform X/Y etc. A dragger on a magnet feels logical. I could imagine all sorts of uses like keeping a hand on the neck of a guitar while playing, holding reigns of a horse, a jump rope between two children, etc. These examples are where a child layer of one puppet is attacted to a magnet in a child layer of another puppet. Magnets at present seem to be restricted to the root of one puppet (e.g. a cup or ball) attaching to the child of another puppet (e.g. a hand).

[DanTull]

Ah, right. Yes, magnets (and dangle, actually) still have some limitations, especially when used together. We were just looking at the case of a dog on a leash yesterday and there isn't a good way to do it with two separate puppets right now, but we're hoping to improve that in the future.

DT

[alank99101739]

Thanks Dan.

In case useful, when playing with the demo I uploaded, I got the following errors at times. The second took a full restart of CH to clear.

I cannot repeat them reliably. I was switching between rig and scene windows a fair bit trying out lots of variations and different puppet structures to try and get an option at worked.

[alank99101739]

Hi jameyc44619071​ - the short answer to your original question is I recommend you move the dragger from the independent layer of the hand to the end of the arm the hand is attached to. The dragger will then move the end of the arm, and the hand will follow (because it is attached to the arm). Putting the dragger on the independent layer will not move the arm it is attached to (because that is how independence works).

Alternatively, make the hand dependent rather than independent so the hand and arm are one. (That is what I normally do.)