How to rig universal joints

Rigging
1

Hey, i have a little confusion about the universal joints , can anybody help me how to rig universal joints?

2

you mean the engineering universal joint?

in that case you need to know which part of the joint will guide the entire setup
from that point you need to work with aimconstraints to get the setup to work
its hard to explain by text but i can create a setup tonight

3

thanxs Peerke for suggestion, but i have some doubts about world Up vector and UpVector in Aim Constraint, can you explaint me what is worldUpVector and UpVector?

and pls send me the file you are going to create at night.

4

world up vector is a position in the world defined bu 3 floats, what you need is an upobject, so a pivot in space attached to something else to make sure that the objects remain constrained to each other and look to the correct objects as well

5

Hey Peerke, if i constraints a polyCube to a polySphere by aim constraints and define an another object in the world as an upVector, then can you tell me what will happen?

6

then the polycube will aim to the polySpheres pivot with the primary axis you have given.
this will create an invisible line between the objects (thats how i like to visualise it)
the up object then defines how the cube wil be rotated over that line (rotation is then like a revolve over the invisible line)

7

Can we see that invisible line if Yes, then how?

8

with the constrained object selected
dispaly > transform display> local rotation axis

this will show a small axis on the pivot position of your object,
in which your invisible line will be represented by the primary axis you have selected

9

universalJoint.zip (15.6 KB)

here you go, the file is created in maya 2014 and may give some errors while opening (because of the plugins we have at work) but it should work propperly
really simple setup with 2 controls;
1 aim and 1 rotation control

10

I got the file , and tried to do it but the object is not constrained correctly can you please send me a tutorial or a word document of how you did it?;

11

Thanx Peerke for you help , i have done it now , no need for tutorial. Thanxs a lot.

12

I blogged a tutorial on this http://techartandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/how-to-rig-universal-joint-in-maya.html

Hope this helps.

Paul