ChrisThom

I know that you can use a bone to add a boolean to a model but can you also use that to make the boolean become part of the model's geometry? Also is there a function or plug-in to subdevide or add additional splines to a model easily rather than having to manualing adding all the CPs & stitching them together?

I'm a little confused. As we have it now the struts fold towards one another. How else do they need to go?

Here's a version if you really want to go nuts. The rotation handle on the smaller bone controls the retraction of the gear bones and there's a spherical constraint on that bone so you can only roll it 90 degrees. Idle hands...

I believe he wants the bones to mirror one another. It's exactly like the other example I gave you where you set the rotation scale to a negative number. Just orient the bone so the rotation of the bone is against the axis you want. Not the length. Here's an example.

Sorry for the delay. OK, it's like, stupid easy to do. Here are the steps and I'm assuming you know how to create and assign bones. 1) Once the model is done create two bones - one for each landing strut. Name them Strut-Left & Right or something simular so as not to get confused. 2) Create 2 additional bones and name them Retract and Rotate. 3) In the model window Rt click and select New -> Pose -> On/Off. This will open a new relationship window. 4) Go into Skeletal mode (F8) and for each strut bone, Rt Click New Constraint -> Orient Like and have the retract bone be the target. You'll see that however you now move the retract bone, the 2 strut bones will follow. Make sure you undo whatever movement you do. 5) In the same way assign a Rotate Like constraint for the struts with the Rotate bone as our target. The problem we have though is that all the bones are rotating in the same direction. There's an easy fix for this. 6) In the relationship window select the strut bone that you want to rotate in the opposite direction and in the PWS highlight Roll Like. Here's the key, in the properties window change the Roll Scale to -100. Now rotate the bone and they all should be rotating as they should. There are more things you could do like adding expressions, assigning spherical constraints and sliders but this will get you going for now. I've attached a sample mov & a new prj file for you to play with. Movie Project file

Have one that controls the main movements like you have then set up another bone and have the gear bone do a rotate like constraint. Here's a link to an example file. Link

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I like your characters, but is that a sheep I see in the jungle?!?

Prety cute. My only critique is that you can't read the sign because of the shadow.

Nice job. If I tried to model my workspace I would have to use a "Crap All Over the Floor" plug-in to get it right.

I can't wait to see an animatio of it seperating the cotton.

He looks like some sort of alien donkey. Nice job.

I like it. How did you animate teh video screens?

It's all done with mirrors my friend. I'm planning on giving this guy some life. I'm still trying to figure out what his body will look like. Also, I've started on my image submission for the Christmas contest so that may take some time.

Oooo, creapy. So is that Major Tom?