Blender quick tip – Rigging window blinds
Daniel Stor writes:
I was struggling with window blinds in blender. Could not find any info on how to set up a rig with blinds, so i decided to figure it out by myself. So i just want to share this video with you all. Maybe someone had the same problem and can find it useful.
Hi, nice tip. I use a similar approach, but with a small difference. The difference comes from the intended use. Generally I don’t want so much a precise open/close control over the blind, but I want them to be randomly distributed along a facade.
For that what I do is create the first one, which it’ll be the one at the top of the window and use an array modifier with a driver and a noise.random multiplied by the maximum number of pieces that fit in a window. That way, once place, by instance or particle or whatever, each one will be open randomly.
That can be improve if u want some control pointing the driver to an empty, and adding a random variation in each, so that way you’ll have a controler that will open-close the blinds but each one will still, in a way look unique.
I will try it out! Thanks!
I can’t say I followed all of that, but I certainly plan to try it out. If I followed this video, how would I then ‘link’ the rotation of the sphere (used to control rotation) to the empty you’re using to raise/lower them? I know it’s two different controls on real blinds, so I suppose you’d need another ‘driver’ or empty, but not sure what the relationships/constraints would be. Not sure I’m being clear, but say you wanted to animate lowering the blinds, while ‘closing’ them. As I typed that I think I just figured out that you’d just animate the sphere using keyframes, but I was thinking there may be a way to rig it to have this behavior or this type of controller.
Oh, and thanks for making the video.
Hello!
I think that I understand what you asking for. It’s hard to explain but I made a short video to make it more clear. I made two drivers to control Y rotation and z location. Then I made one target for both of them. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCdf1CyPQI
Bah, I’ve typed out 2 responses now and just can’t seem to avoid being confusing. I think I just need to do a bit of research on this topic instead of expecting you to explain the basics to me. I think what I’m asking is, to do an animation of the blinds being raised, while also opening (not that you’d do that with actual blinds), if you’d just keyframe your controllers (like keyframing the rotation of the sphere, and the height of the empty) or if you’d set up another controller to do something like that. I’m thinking it just comes down to your needs. I’m guessing either way, it would still come down to keyframing any controllers right? I don’t think shapekeys would be appropriate. Sorry to be confusing/ignorant, and thanks for the 2nd video. I’ll have to return the gesture one day.