Shock absorber linkage design

Question

Noob help request please to carry this the last 2 yards to the goal line! I'm trying to rig 2 objects who move up and down Z independently, and a 3rd point that tracks them horizontally, at the same distance, in the Y axis as the 2 in Z move together and apart. Please see the attached Blend file.

I can best describe the requirements using our hands: Place your hands palms-together in front of you, (like praying). Obviously the dist between your wrists and your finger tips are fixed. Now, move either of your wrists, singularly, or together, away from each other in a horizontally straight line, while keeping your finger tips together. Notice how your hands eventually flatten out horizontally, palms down at the point where your hand size restricts any further wrist movement without moving your fingers apart.

That's what I'm trying to get to -- that V-shaped movement with the fingers as the linked pivot. I've got there most of the way. Please see the blend file attached. My rig gets the central finger touch-point to track the wrist movement very well as they draw together/closer, but it's the point where the wrists move apart is where the rig breaks down -- the pivot will not go/align itself to a vertical position in the Z, as I'd expect.

What am I doing incorrectly or missing please? Mark

Answer 1

For independent control from each end, you can use an IK chain.

• Create an armature of 2 bones and a target bone, as an IK joint.
• Create left and right controller empties, and a Pole empty to control the direction of bend in the bones
• Directly Bone-Parent each bar to its respective bone.

• Parent the entire armature to the left controller, and put a Copy Location bone constraint on the target bone, binding its location to the right controller
• Parent all controllers to another Empty, to manage the whole rig.

(The armature is in a hidden collection:'Bones')

Answer 2

You could do this with drivers and a bit of Pythagoras.

• Construct your bars and linkage in the fully extended position:

• The origins of both bars, Bar_L, Bar_R are at the centers of their sliding pivots, the centers of the large circles
• The central Link (pink) is at World 0
• All parented to an Empty,(the square) so all coordinates can be measured in the Empty's space, and everything transformed as a group.

Both bars are given a Locked Track constraint, aiming their X / -X at the link object:

To set up a driver, right-click in the X location field of one of the bars in the 3D View > N Properties region > 'Item' tab, and select 'Add Driver'. You have the option to open a Driver Editor on the selected object.

You can also set any split-off pane in the interface to be a Driver Editor with the Editor Type dropdown in its header.

There will be other ways of doing this, I'm sure. This way is prone to a bit of numerical error, but maybe it's good enough?

EDIT in response to query..

If, say, you wanted the left bar tip to slide along X while the right remains stationary, then you could drive the Empty to translate the whole rig to compensate for the inward/outward movement of the right tip. For instance, the Empty could be driven to be halfway between whatever other parts were squeezing the joint open and closed. Is that what you'd like?

.. This can be done with an IK chain, see other answer.