Crabtapult July Competition Entry

Just popping in with my setup for the July Competition. Today was mostly learning how to run a quick locomotion + playing around with pins.

The goal for this is to have a few more short shots ( :sweat_smile: ), the most complicated of which is going to be the hero crab launching himself from the catapult.

We’ll see how it goes. If anyone has any hints for cutting a rope, let me know! I’d like to have him pincer a rope to activate it, but that may be beyond my current ragdoll-fu.

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Oooo I was so hoping he’d get on and fire away haha. :slight_smile: For cutting a rope, try this.

  1. Make a rope out of joints
  2. Select a joint around where you want it cut, call Ragdoll → Edit → Unparent
    • Now there will be two ropes.
  3. Select the two now separate joints, give them a Distance Constraint
  4. Now animate the stiffness of that constraint to 0 when you want it cut

Welcome to the forums! :partying_face:

Took this suggestion for a spin, and I think the Attach Constraint is actually a better fit here. It will also maintain the rotation between the two cut Markers, whereas the Distance Constraint only takes translation into account.

Step 1 - Setup

Here’s a rope, made with some joints. The last joint got a larger Radius, which also makes it heavier.

Step 2a - Attach Constraint

Here’s what I’d suggest, the Attach Constraint. Part of the latest release, Ragdoll 2022.07.20.

Step 2b - Distance Constraint

Alternatively, here’s what I managed to get using a Distance Constraint. One of the challenges was offsetting the point at which they connect. It defaults to keeping the center of each joint at the same distance. But that’s not quite what we want here.

Hope it helps!

Actually. :grin: You can achieve this without constraint, via the Translate Motion attribute.

Just don’t forget to also animate Pose Stiffness = 0 otherwise it’ll still try and follow the animated rotation.

The constraint-less solution seems like it will apply to the most problems, so I’m going to give that a shot. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, here’s the other shots I’ve finished in the meantime

https://vimeo.com/735304909

Okay, I definitely ran out of time, but here is my submission.

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