Scissor Jack Rigging

[cxg2827]

Hey all,

So I'm trying to figure out how to create an animation for a radiator panel in blender. I would like to know how to parent the various components so that if I rotate a main torque panel at the base, that all the linked radiator panels and scissor linkages move respectively.

I tested an animation where the radiator panels are parented to one another (from top to bottom) and animated each radiators via rotation keyframes. I then did the same for the scissor linkages. When deploying the radiator, it seems that it looks OK during the whole animation cycle.

However, even though this workaround seems to work, would anyone still know how to do a "proper" scissor jack rigging?

 

 

[nli2work]

if it *looks* good the whole way through. then it's "proper"

[cxg2827]

i guess if it aint broke, don't fix it 

[NecroBones]

 

Yep, no need to overcomplicate things if it's working. You could do it with look-at constraints and the like. But in this case, no need.

 

[InsaneDruid]

Sounds ok to me.

What I did on my TKS solar panels (half of a scissor) is to use an empty as an "input" (only this empty needs to be animated via keyframes) which is limited with the "limit Rotation" Constraint and then used transformation constraint or simple copy rotation restraints (where possible, i.e. whenever there was no need to scale the angle of the rotation down or up in relation to the input) to get the needed rotations of the parts (also parented to each other like you described) from the rotation of the "input" empty.

This way changing the animation (speed, amount etc) is a bit easier, and its just nice to be able to extend the panels by rotating one empty during modelling of the rest of the TKS. And I just wanted to play with constraints.