Fix constrains for cellist animation

xcabezaxborradora

Hola!

I'm really struggling to animate properlly a cellist. 

I need a couple of things in order for it to look realistic: 

The bow should always stay touching the strings and in a 90 degree angle perpendicular to them. Is there a way to fix the bow constrains, so it always stays in contact with the string and stays perpendicular to it? (The bow is parented to the hand, therefore I move it with the hand. I guess I can add an empty ... but how to constrain the bow to it?)

Also the cello has bones independent of the Genesis figure, therefore each time I move a pose with some cello position changes, the pose doesn't retain the cello position. Can I join the bones of the figure and the cello so they pose saves also the cello postion? This way I could also use the pupeter tool and save my own poses with the cello changes. 

Really powerful animation tool is Daz 3D!! I hope I will learn to use it properlly.

Thanks a lot in advance. 

Ivy

Hi. I think your going to have some trouble animating a scene like that with daz studio

I maybe corrected.  But my experiences with animating in daz studio and fingering musical instruments is that you will have to do each movement 1 frame at a time  to complete whole motion sequence.  I can not recommend the Daz IK-chian it has never worked well for a sliding obj/prop. on another obj  or prop.with out some kind of distorting of the object/prop

You could try using 3DU limbstick it might work for this challenge in your project. But I would particularly pay attention during setting up your primitives or nulls on your strings and  the bow.  as you keyframe the motion as it may distort or bend the strings on th cello, once you pulled the bow to simulate it being drawn across the string. It would be a timing issue more than anything of when you connect and unconnected limbstick to the null  you would have to set your nulls for each string to be played and a null for each position on the bow that was to touch the strings during keyframing the animation of the bows. again this set up would be very time consuming but do-able in Daz Studio and properly your best option 

Though If your patient enough, it properly could be done by hand one frame at a time  but it would be extremely time consuming endeavor

If you were using blender I would suggest maybe you try to animate the " Vertex Groups" string to bow" to Pin or Unpin in the bow from the string on the cello. or maybe try blender's hard surface tool for pining the bow to the assigned cello string on the timeline keyframe. none of which daz studio has as a option for at this time. so in Daz studio it would have to be done by hand 1 frame at a time . or maybe try limbstik

limbstick can be found here 

for genesis 3 or 8 https://www.daz3d.com/limbstick-for-genesis-3-+-8

for genesis 9  https://www.daz3d.com/limbstick-for-genesis-9

 

I'm sorry I can be more help.

xcabezaxborradora

Thanks a lot for your reply!

I don't need such level of detail, that the string bends.

Just that the bow stays in contact with the string (by using a null right on the string that I want to stick to) and that it always stays perpendicular to the string.

Isn't that possible?

Limbstick looks good, but actually the bow is simply attached to the hand already. 

Isn't there a way to keep the bow perpendicular to the string and stiking to it?

I use blender since three years, but I really struggled much more to do this simple animation than in Daz. 

Have a nice day