Hanging setup

[Anton_Blake]

Hey guys, can someone help advise me how to set up a hanging chimp? Simular to Jasons awesome advanced monkey set up. Would i have to create a reverse joint setup?

thanks in advance!
Anton

[marcus]

Is this the one you mean?

SpiderMonkey!

SPIDERMONKEY!! I haven’t done one of these in a while! What is the best way to test an epic new release … [Pose] Spidermonkey time! The new Influence setting on the attach constraint is perfect for pulling the hand to a location on the vine/tree that the monkey will be swinging from and at point of contact they effect each other Here’s a quick 10 min test to see how I’d do the actual piece … The only thing really animated here are the Attach Constraints stiffness I made sure …

If so, that’s an Attach Constraint between hand and tree that he animates the stiffness of for an on/off effect. He’s got a few, animated to activate one after the other to make it appear as though he’s climbing and reaching for branches.

[Anton_Blake]

for my example its just hanging. once i get more familiar, i’l dive into more complexity. but mine is literally hanging from one arm. i have a base swing cycle i animated but now i plan on making more dynamic stuff from. Swing pose, into hanging. Then a hanging idle. Grab, hold (one arm on each branch)

for now, just want swing pose into hanging using one arm.

thanks

[Anton_Blake]

I started keying this, thats when i thought of Ragdoll and Jasons awesome monkey demo.

First on my list:
So i basically need this but Ragdoll driven

edit* - this is obviously animated…i want this same output but with Ragdoll. I just want some advice on what drives what.

thanks

[marcus]

Gotcha.

Starting off with the assumption that you’ve setup the monkey with Ragdoll already, and that the rails have a Marker each set to Animated, then you could either use a Pin Constraint or Attach Constraint between the hand(s) and rail.

• Pin Constraint would pin the hand in worldspace
• Attach Constraint would pin the hand to another Marker, like the rail

If you don’t need the rail to dynamically move as well, a Pin Constraint would be the easiest.

Then I would make a Pin Constraint per hand, and animate rPinConstraint.Stiffness = 0.1 when you want one hand to hold onto the rail, and off when you want it not to hang on.

You wouldn’t need the whole monkey setup with physics, just the hand and master control for simple results, such as:

monkeytest.zip (16.3 KB)

The main challenge (I found) was that to make it look natural, you’ll need to work alongside the simulation to know when he should let go and when he should grab. It would heavily depend on his center of mass as he swings. Not easy to animate, not easy to simulate.

On those last two bars, I’ve animated both constraints on at the same time, making it look like they are both pulling on the character; like both arms are hanging on to a rail each.

[Anton_Blake]

wow! very impressive. No i havent even set up the markers yet. Because i wasnt sure the direction the joints should be. Do i select spine 01,05 then shoulder to hand? if i set hand as animated would everything else follow?

[Anton_Blake]

ahhh i think im getting somewhere now. i’l show progress soon!

[Anton_Blake]

somewhat getting there i think

[marcus]

Looking good!

@Anton_Blake

Because i wasnt sure the direction the joints should be. Do i select spine 01,05 then shoulder to hand? if i set hand as animated would everything else follow?

The direction of joints won’t matter.

You could also use Animated instead of a Pin Constraint, the difference would be that you cannot smoothly blend into the target position, nor can the hand rotate as it is attached (with only Translate Stiffness and no Rotate Stiffness). But if you have already animated the hand, which can be hard to align with the simulation, then animating the attribute from Simulated to Animated would achieve a similar effect.

[Anton_Blake]

progress

[marcus]

Looks good. One of the things that stand out to me is how rigid the hand is. You could animate it to look loose following along with the physics, but it would be hard and would undo itself once you edit the simulation.

This is where a Pin or Attach Constraint differs from the Animated behaviour; it would let you constrain only the position of the hand, and set its pivot to where the bar is, and let rotation follow the simulation naturally.

As a next step, I’d suggest putting a pin constraint on that second hand, moving it to the bar, and slowly ramping up the Translate Stiffness, leaving Rotate Stiffness at 0. You should see him reaching for the second bar.

It would not be entirely natural, more akin to someone taking his hand and pulling it to the other bar - as opposed to him reaching for it. To compensate for it, you could animate the arm to try and reach. Then to create the swinging motion, you could put a third Pin Constraint on the torso or hip, and only work with Rotate Stiffness as you rotate that constraint back and forth.

monkeytest2.zip (15.4 KB)

[Anton_Blake]

really happy with this one! thanks Marcus!