Constraining an Insect Leg ~ Adding More Legs
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CONSTRAINING AN INSECT LEG
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BASIC SET-UP AND POSITIONING
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SETTING UP THE RIG BONES
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ADDING THE CONSTRAINTS
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ADDING MORE LEGS
Insects tend to have six legs, after all. -
ADDING MORE LEGS, CONT'D
1. Save your model. Right click on the model and choose “Save As”. This will save the model as an .mdl file, in other words, as an individual model file separate from any choreography, material, action, or project.
2. Delete the instance of your model from your Project Workspace.
3. Leave Animation:Master and open a text editor. SimpleText, WordPad, Notepad are all good for this purpose. (OS X users: by default, OS X’s TextEdit only saves files in Rich Text Format. Change your preferences to make sure you can save in plain text.)
4. In the Text Editor, open your .mdl file. Do a Find and Replace. You’ll want to find “R_Mid” and replace it with “R_Fore”.
5. Once completed, save this file out under a different name, like “R_foreleg”.
6. Do another Find and Replace. This time find “R_Fore” and replace it with “R_Hind”. Save this file under a different name also, like “R_hindleg”.
7. Go back into Animation:Master, and load your first model.
8. Right Click on the model’s name in the Project Workspace and go to Import>Model.
Import the R_foreleg model directly into your first leg model.
9. Find the first model you saved out of the text editor, “R_foreleg”, and hit Open.
10. Notice that immediately under the “Everything” bone, an “Everything2” bone was created. Also, if you open up the Poses, you’ll see “Rig2” right under “Rig”. It doesn’t seem as though anything else has changed, but this is just because the model we imported matches exactly the model we already have.
The result of importing the second model directly into the first.
11. Go into bones mode and select the “Everything2” bone. In the Heirarchy Tab of the Properties Panel, type “15” into the Z Offset field and “30” into the Y Rotate. Make sure that the “Move control points” option is still checked.
Moving the “R_foreleg” up 15 cm and rotating it by 30 degrees using the “Everything2” bone.
12. In the Project Workspace, select the “Everything2” bone. Drag it on top of the “Everything” bone. Delete the “Eveything2” bone.
13. Save this model under yet a different name. Right Click the name of the model and go to “Save As”. Call this model, “R_side”.
14. (These next 4 steps are almost identical to 8 – 12). Right Click on the model’s name in the Project Workspace and go to Import>Model. Find the second model you saved out of the text editor, “R_hindleg”, and hit Open.
15. Again, an “Everything2” bone has been added beneath your “Everything” bone, and “Rig3” has been added to your Poses.
16. In bones mode, select the “Everything2” bone. In the Heirarchy Tab of the Properties Panel, type “-15” into the Z Offset field and “-30” into the Y Rotate. Make sure that the “Move control points” option is still checked.
Moving the “R_hindleg” back by -15 cm and rotating it by -30 degrees using the “Everything2” bone.