How do I make 2 bone structures interact ?

[saintbe]

Not sure if that makes sense but I have 2 objects in a scene.

There's 1 bone layer containing 2 individial bonesets. One for each object. There's no parent relationship between the 2 bonesets.
A hand of boneset1 is supposed to grab/hold an arm from boneset 2.

The idea is to move the armbone from boneset2 so that the handbone from boneset1 follows it, no matter how I move the arm ... following the angle and such.
I have tried using target bones but that is not working because the hand jumps around all over the place.
Also, I have tried using the Angle and Position control bones but nothing happens there (it doesn't look like that works if the bones are from individual bonesets). It works fine if you have only 1 boneset.

Currently I haven't found a way to do this and I am manually placing/turning each boneset individually which takes a lot more time... would be great if there's a known way to do this that I am missing.

I read something similar in an old post but can't get it to work... it might no longer be relevant since that post was from 2007 (viewtopic.php?p=46903)

Thanks,
-Kim.

[willf]

Try putting all the objects in the same bone group?

[saintbe]

Hi willf,

Thanks for the reply but as I said in the description it works fine when I have only 1 boneset.

The problem is that making one boneset/group adds other issues. F.e. I need to be able to move the bone objects seperately (except for the part where they hold eachother)... making just one boneset makes that process very painfull (at least with the rig I tried this with).

Thanks,
-Kim

[slowtiger]

Angle control works fine here: 2 different bone chains in one layer, one controlling the other in perfect sync like dancers on a stage.

Bu maybe that's not what you want to do? "Arm bone" and "hand bone" indicate something like a handshake. For something like this you have 2 options:
- just follow the last element of one bone chain with the last element of the other bone chain manually.
- inverse the bone chain of the second character, adjust the dangling end manually (and preferrably hide it in dark clothes or what).

[heyvern]

You may want to fiddle with the new "target" property of a bone added in v10.

You could have two chains in one bone layer, and a bone not part of any chain. You set the target of the "hand" to this other bone. If for example you had two arm chains and wanted to link the hands, set both hands to target a single bone.

Dragging that bone will move both chains as if they were connected.

However this is a "one trick pony". You can't "turn off" the connection with a key frame. Also if this involves two characters, all the bones of both character would need to be in one bone rig.