Wiring Bend Gizmo With Helper

Rigging
1

Hello everybody,

I want to wire the x, y and z position of a helper to the gizmo of a bendmodifier on an other object. I first align the gizmo of the bend with the helper and then I wire the positions. But every time I do this, the gizmo of the bend is not aligned any more with the position of the helper.

Someone can tell me what I am doing wrong?

Thanks,

Nysuatro

2

Bottomline, you actually can’t wire it.

The gizmo “lives” in object space, while the helper lives in worldspace, the only way to get some results is if you put the object and the helper both at [0,0,0]. The only way to do what you want to do is to put a script controller on the gizmo transform and calculate the local gizmo transform in relation to it’s parent object offset transform and it’s world transform.

Or

http://scripts.breidt.net/#gizmoControl

-Johan

3

Thanks for the reply. That scripts saves me a lot of time :slight_smile:

4

It sure will, but will it make you a better technical artist? :wink:

-Johan

5

what about:

  • make the aligend controlobject a child of the object with the bend modifier

  • copy/paste the transform controllers from the control object onto the bend gizmos transform in trackview. Choose “instance”
    at least that works for me…

6

[QUOTE=spacefrog;8576]what about:

  • make the aligend controlobject a child of the object with the bend modifier

  • copy/paste the transform controllers from the control object onto the bend gizmos transform in trackview. Choose “instance”
    at least that works for me…[/QUOTE]

Damn, I totally forgot about that. it works perfectly. Thanks for the reply :slight_smile:

7

This is not completely full proof, it doesn’t take object offset into consideration. So move or rotate the pivot and this will fail, so make sure to reset xform before doing so.

-Johan

8

Ah, I found the reason why there was still an offset. When I turn of my displacement modifier or noice modifier then the offset disappears. Any idea how I can prevent this from offsetting when using a displacement/Noice.

I guess the best idea is to make an expression controller to calculate the offset and then copy/paste/instance this controller to the other controllers. Or is there a better way?

And is the reset xform not only for the controllers of the node and not for the modifiers?

And is there a way to reference to the controller itself when I want to make an expression? Something like this : this.position + (VectorPoshelper - this.position)
I tried this by making a vector variable that was pointing to this controller. But offcourse I get the Circular Dependency.

9

[QUOTE=Nysuatro;8580]
And is the reset xform not only for the controllers of the node and not for the modifiers?
[/QUOTE]
Nope, every modifier is affected by 3 transforms. Object transform, object offset transform and the gizmo transform. Look it up. Reset xForm is for resetting the object and object offset transform. What do you think happens when you move or rotate the pivot, you’re actually offsetting the object offset transform, and are not affecting the transform controllers.

-Johan