It’s my first time posting, so I’ll try to explain my problem as best I can.

I’ve got a wheel which is wired to rotate with the movement of my main control. I’ve linked a dummy to that wheel, which is offset from the center pivot so that it moves in a circular motion as the wheel moves.
Here’s the tricky bit: I’ve got another object that I want to inherit the movement of this dummy, but only in one axis (in this case I believe its the X axis).

To put it more plainly, I want this object to move back and forth as its moving along, but not up and down or side to side.

How can I do this? Is it even possible?
I’ve run out of ideas on this one. I have another project with a similar issue.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

If you are making this last object a child you can try turning off the inherit flags.  If you look under the hierarchy panel and link tab you will see a rollout that will show inheritance flags. Try un-checking the flags of the transforms that you do not wish to inherit.

Randall Hess
Senior Technical Animator
THQ, Volition Inc.

Animate your dummy with the RFC set to Local to get it to move “in and out.”

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
Dual Intel® Xeon® 6 core X5650 @ 2.67GHz CPU 36GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000
450GB HDD (x3) and 2TB HDD

3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion

Ok,
So the green, main control, drives the wheels, which moves the spoke (purple section). I need that purple section to stay within to the red section.

The dummy attached to the spoke, along with an orientation constraint and changing the link inheritance almost has it working the way I want it… Almost.
I’ve tried changing the position of the dummy so its closer to the center of the wheels. No dice.

Ideas?

	Attachment

I could link the blue thing to the green thing IF I wanted the blue thing to be static. However, the idea here is to have the blue thing move back and forth as the spoke rotates. Without the use of manual animation.

Ok, so by removing the Z axis from the inherit movement upon linking (as well as adjusting a few other, minor, things) I have achieved the result I wanted.

However, now that the Z axis is no longer considered, when I rotate the entire rig… Well, its pretty evident in the video I’m uploading.

http://vimeo.com/34769240

I need to reintroduce the influence of the Z axis, but how?
I’m pretty sure linking won’t work, and I’m fairly certain wire parameters would only fix one of the rotations in which the rig fails.

Obviously the rig works, provided I animate it along a flat surface, which is exactly how the toy I based it off is meant to be played with.
I would like to find a way to resolve this issue though.

It seems to me that you may want a full transform inheritance potentially. You can alternatively put a transform script on your extra dummy. This way you can build a matrix based on the transform of the main control while ignoring any rotation or translation values you prefer. This involves a bit of matrix math but it is powerful once you get used to it. Can you post the bare bones of your rig or something I may be able to provide a transform script for you.

Randall Hess
Senior Technical Animator
THQ, Volition Inc.

You can strip it down to basic components if you like. Just so I get the gist of what control needs to be updated.  Your call.

Randall Hess
Senior Technical Animator
THQ, Volition Inc.

Having issues with creating attachments…

Please see this post for help with attachments.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Ok, This should do it.
If you can’t quite see what’s happening with the rig, try linking a camera to it before moving the control.

	Attachment
riggingissue.zip