Rigging a Book

[Larry J B]

Hello:

 

I am trying to rig a book I designed. I am wondering if I should be building it from a closed form then use a pose slider/precent to get the book to open pivoting on bones.

 

I know that if I hold teh book up like you do when reading it and put the bone up/down the book spine and associate front cover CPs I can then rotate in Z axi to 'close' the book. but then I get stuck with the binding AND when I close the book, the PADDING page overlaps and doesn't close on top of the padding page.

 

The front padding can be removed but being a dictionary book with the word definitions I ant being in the middle, I can't realistically have the middle of the dictionary open in the front of the book. After all I need a-j or whatever to be listed in the front.

 

i guess I'm asking where to put thefront cover bone(in top view) so when it closes, it doesn't pull teh spine fnny OR close through and overlap the front and back padding section.

 

I have been out ofthe loopfor bit and am a few versions behind o any new features I may not have access to (yet).

 

BTW:

My WIP images can be found at http://www.scientiallabs.com/wip/

 

Binder is front cover

padding is the front/back padding

pages is the 3 exact copies of flat 2-d (x/y plane)stacked together and pulled back in Z a little and stacked to give me a few pages that can turn while the book opens for etra effect/space between pages when a book is opened.

render is a quick render of the whole book withthe decl stamp of words

whole is the undendered wire/shade view of all layer together

 

I just need a ewsuggestions and pointers to rig/smartskin/etc.

 

If there is alredy book moel I can study from that'd be great too.

 

Thanks again for any uggestions and help anyone can provide.

 

-Larry B

[robcat2075]

I rigged a book for a project a few years ago

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=305376

 

I'll have to look at it to recall what i was doing.

 

I think I had every page on its own bone and weighted so it would bend as it was turned to the side.

 

And then there was one page that the character actually flipped that needed more bones so it do the more complex motion of being slid and turned

 

I think building the book closed that you will open is easier than building a book open that you will close.

[Larry J B]

Thanks Rob:

 

I took your advice on the page turning. i took it one step further. i put a vertical bone (up/down) and set teh manipulators to roll only, around z axis ONLY. Using the roll handle I can roll the book cover open/closed. Then use the arm-like rig on the page segments so I can bend the page.

 

For the cover I used a modified 'fan bones' similar to old elbow rigging. EXCEPT roll like (%) on the one binding edge so rolling the book closed will roll the spline behind to some degree to keep smooth corners.

 

I seperated the rig into:

Front cover

Back Cover

Front padding (thick bunch to emulate a stack of paper)

back pading

1 page to turn (on vertical roll AND spanning across for flexible page)

 

You can see various images at scientiallabs.com/wip/

bone.jpg will show the bone setup (the 2nd corner on cover and padding are hidden but looking at shaded CP and surface in bones mode you can see the colors indicating bones that are hidden).