Vinzenz Rein

Yes. The FK approach also wasn't very fruitful. For my porpuses, I stopped trying to make it work with cinema. Sadly, would have been could to make it work. But I guess, my construction isn't the best use-case for this approach. Anyway, it was fun to learn basic rigging techniques and to communicate between c4d and a microcontroller. For anyone who may have similar problems and stumble over this post: I ended up using UDP and OSC to transmit values in real-time to my micro controller. This allows me to quick set keyframes and generate poses and realise the performance with a time-line based interface using Vezér.

Hi noseman. Thanks for your answer! Well, in my project file, I use the spline lengths as information for my motors. Its true that within my IK rig, I'm not generating any data that is useable for my motors. Its just the constrained splines that calculate the length and that is the information communicated with my micro controller. But I understand that IK doesnt make much sense in this context. I will probably try to implement FK mechanisms that appear to be more flexible. Maybe it does help, I don't know. :(

To do that, I use pySerial. I started with this tutorial here: http://pushbuttons.io/blog/cinema4d-ardunio-pan-tilt-servo You should also pay attention to the comment section. But do consider, that serial communication slows down you micro controller a lot. If you send a lot of data over serial, especially when using Stepper Motors, it will slow down the speed drastically. But anyway, I'll try using FK for now ... but I fell like it will be a pain in the ass :/

The proclivity to form spirals isn't the problem. It is an artistic installation and its not about precise control over the movements, roughly is enough for this use case. Although, I understand it might be easier to use 4 strings; but this is a part that cannot be changed right now :/

I've added an video where you can see the motion of the robot. Its very short though. Hi! I'm super new to animation and rigging in general. I hope the wiggly motion from the springs can be ignored within the model. I just wanna see a somewhat accurate representation in C4D of what's happening in real-life. Also note, that the trunk always tends to create a spiral where the tip is always to lowest point of the structure. ...is there like a way to somehow constrain the movement in C4D in that way?

Hello friends. I've got the following problem. Please watch my video first, as it gives you a rough description of what my current situation is: I've built an elephants trunk robot and want to control it using Cinema 4D. The model sends out position for the motors to go to via pySerial to my micro controller. This is working. However the problem that I have concerns the 3D model. The bending of the 3d model doesn't represent the movements of the actual robot. I want to know how I can iteratively make this the model come closer to what is happening in the real robot. I also attached the C4D file for you to have a look. I've used the Joint tool to create my joints. Totally I've got 14 segments, representing the 14 compression spring mechanism that I used. But the bending of the joints doesn't reflect what's happening in real life. The structure moves much softer than in the 3D model. Also played around with the Dynamics-Tab in the IK-Tag but without much success. Help would be highly appreciated! best wishes Vinzenz trunk-just-finished-animiation-v2.c4d