Marionette puppet-like movement using physics?

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jhbmw007
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Marionette puppet-like movement using physics?

Post by jhbmw007 »

Is there a way to create a puppet that would be controlled from bones from the top down, in similar fashion of a marionette puppet? I tried the following setup and put the bone layer inside a group with physics enabled, but all this does is cause the entire "puppet" to fall and fall:
Image

I tried messing with the bone physics settings and putting the physics region to "0" on the head bone, but that causes the head to stay while the rest of the body falls away. I want the head bone to remain still (this will be the one I animate manually) and the rest of the limbs to "hang" from it and move according to physics. If I can get that to work, ideally, I would like to add control bones for each arm to (which would connect at his wrists). Is this even possible?[/img]
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

Have a look at http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/puppet.anme.zip - it's done in 5.6 and uses just the bone dynamics there. Is that what you have in mind?
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jhbmw007
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Post by jhbmw007 »

I guess that will work. I was hoping for something physics based, that would behave the same way a marionette would, but I don't think it's possible with the physics engine in AS.

With your model, would there be a way to have the puppet's legs/feet detect collision with a floor, so that the legs bend when the feet touch the ground as the puppet is moved up an down?
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

I don't know if collision detection is part of v8 since I don't own that, but I doubt it.

As for physics: if you build the rig in a way that all limbs go down vertically, you'll get a good enough imitation of them following gravity when moved.
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GCharb
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Post by GCharb »

That is pretty neat slowtiger!
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Víctor Paredes
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Post by Víctor Paredes »

AS8 detects collision with physics, the problem is you can't animate your character by hand. You set all in frame zero, then hit play and see how it goes.
You can create "machine" rigs to make things move, but all must be configured in frame zero.
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