Need some help with animations

[jalebru]

I'm currently banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to animate strut compression on the landing gear. I can get the arg working fine, but the problem is I can't get the strut hinge arms to follow each other.

 

Here are the parts I am currently working with and how I have them linked.

 

And here are where I have the pivots set up.

 

And this is what happens when I move the cylinder down.

 

So my question is what do I need to do to have the arms follow each other? I have some experience with modeling, but it has all been for static objects for games like NWN and Oblivion and I'm a total noob to animating.

[aaron886]

I'm about to have that problem myself. I'd like to think there's a better way, like IK solvers or somethin, but as of now what I'd do is just to give the lower and upper arm their own arguments, tell them to flex half way so that they stay together at the joint.

[Blaze]

I'm about to have that problem myself. I'd like to think there's a better way, like IK solvers or somethin, but as of now what I'd do is just to give the lower and upper arm their own arguments, tell them to flex half way so that they stay together at the joint.

That's how I'm doing it right now as well. Ripper from the VRA said there's that way with using IK solvers or something to link everything together and then move and set keyframes or something and all should work, but I've yet to get it to work that way. The manual way is a major PITA.