I have seen tutorials on how to rig and deform a character mesh, but none on how to rig a robot arm made of separate parts.

In Maya this is done by parenting the separate parts to bones, which do not deform the separate mesh parts.

How is this type of rig set up in Houdini? Are joints also used?

Links to tutorials would help.

Hi @litote do you have an image of what you are trying to rig? Maybe a description of what you want to robot arm to do?

Glen

litote
In Maya this is done by parenting the separate parts to bones, which do not deform the separate mesh parts.

you can do the exact same thing in Houdini

@GlenD

It is just a mechanical robot arm like those in a car factory. I would also like to use the technique to animate a human skeleton as I don't want to deform the bones, just rotate them at the elbow, etc.

@golfarb: Can you explain a simple setup for an arm? How do you parent the arm/forearm to the bones? I can't find any tutorials on this.

on the Characters shelf tab there is a simple biped
click it to add it to the scene
RMB and select Allow Editing of Contents

go inside the HDA and you'll see how the geometry is simply parented to the bones

goldfarb
on the Characters shelf tab there is a simple biped
click it to add it to the scene
RMB and select Allow Editing of Contents

go inside the HDA and you'll see how the geometry is simply parented to the bones

Hello,

I have an old version of Houdini. I can't find this example. Is it in H13?

er…I can't remember…
at the Object level try:
TAB > simple
and see what pops up
you really should update to a later version….

Well, it's extremely old, but you'll learn a lot on how to approach this, and its 3DBuzz's Houdini Technical Rigging series:
https://www.3dbuzz.com/training/view/houdini-rigging-volume-5/advanced-vehicle-rigging [www.3dbuzz.com]

@ RudiNieuwenhuis:

Thanks for the link. I will look in to that.

RudiNieuwenhuis
Well, it's extremely old, but you'll learn a lot on how to approach this, and its 3DBuzz's Houdini Technical Rigging series:
https://www.3dbuzz.com/training/view/houdini-rigging-volume-5/advanced-vehicle-rigging [www.3dbuzz.com]

I'm trying to work through this tutorial. The original page doesn't work, but there is a 3D Buzz page that has the various .zip files of the videos. However, it doesn't have the .hip or .bgeo files mentioned in the tutorial for the actual vehicle.

Does anyone have these?