Help! I´m in way over my head... (Rigging problems)

[Mark_Jackson]

Any ideas how to rig this badboy? I´ve spent a long time creating this beautiful base a stem and I don´t want to start again with something more simple.

I hate asking for help and normally prefer trying to discover the answer myself.
However after scouring the internet for answers and even downloading other examples
of what I´m trying to do and spending a few hours reading through these forums about
others with the same problem, I still have no idea how to rig my lamp properly.

I guess I need an IK bone controller or something but surely that´ll be once I can get the
double arms to follow another bone which connects the fixed frame with the bolts.

I´ll probably spend the rest of the day trying to figure this out… Any help would be appreciated.
I know this course doesn´t cover what I want to do because I jumped ahead in the videos.
I saw one guy able to fix his lamp up using IK but he doesn´t explain how to do it.

[Mark_Jackson]

Update, I´ve tried all the bone constraints. IK I don´t seem to know how to use that correctly if that´s the answer. I can´t link two bone heads together so that they contrict each other.

I didn´t parent the arms to the bones yet just to prevent from deforming my mesh unnecessarily.
I want the yellow and red bone tips to stay together when rotated.

Any ideas or help would be appreciated, thanks

[Mark_Jackson]

Update: Trying IK again and I think I´ve got it but I can´t connect the other geometry to anything.

I´ll keep updating my progress here to keep a log so people with the same problem can follow and
so that when I find the solution I know how to write the tutorial.

[Bruceifer906]

Love how this is looking, that shading and rendering is awesome. I am not far enough to actually help but I did find someone else who ran into a similar problem on the forms. Pixar Luxo Jr. Rigging Hope it helps.

[Mark_Jackson]

Wow! Thank you! That post is useful, I never saw that post

I think I´ve found a way to do it but the one in the post you linked looks a bit easier to rig up.
I´ll post an update when I get more done to this rig tonight. (Had to go away to make dinner)

Thanks again

[Mark_Jackson]

Hi all,

I managed to work it out using the above sample blender which uses a very different lamp with very similar functionality.

I had to include another bone at the very bottom which is very very tiny to get bottom hinge piece moving and extend the family of bones correctly.

Thanks again Bruceifer for the link and the help

Here is my armature before setting the mesh parts to their parent bones.

Now I just need to create a lamp head and maybe add another IK bone and some more IK constraints to make it more manouverable.

Im going to add another Root bone to move the base around too and include that with another IK bone perhaps. We´ll see. I´ll make a tutorial of this once I´m done. So happy!