In this short tutorial I will show you how to set up Constraints to easily open and close the upper compartments of a tool box.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! In this short tutorial, created using version 5 of Blender, I will show you how to set up Constraints to easily open and close the upper compartments of a tool box.
In this particular model, in fact, each upper compartment of the tool box has two connecting brackets, so we need to find a way to rotate both of them and, above all, make the compartment follow an arcing movement while remaining horizontal during the motion.
Among other things, there are two brackets per side, so we cannot join them or parent them to each other in any way. We therefore have to rely either on Armatures or on rotation Constraints. In this tutorial, we will examine the second solution.
Let’s focus on just one side, that is, on a single compartment. The work on the other compartment will be perfectly symmetrical. We want to move the compartment by rotating just one bracket, whose Origin is already correctly positioned where the pin attached to the main tool box is located.
To make the other three brackets on this side follow the rotation of the selected one, we need to give all of them a Copy Rotation Constraint, setting the reference bracket as the Target. Let’s do this work on just one bracket to begin with.
To apply this Constraint to the other two brackets as well, we select those two objects, then select last the bracket that already has the Constraint. In this way, the last selected bracket becomes the active object in the selection, and we can see its Constraint panel.
In this panel, we click Copy To Selected to assign the same Constraint to the other objects in the selection. Now, when we rotate the reference bracket, we can see that the other three rotate correctly.
To make the compartment move when we rotate the reference bracket, we give the compartment a Child Of Constraint, setting the reference bracket in the Target field of the Constraint.
Rotating the bracket now, we notice that the compartment rotates with it. To keep the compartment horizontal, we also give it a Limit Rotation Constraint, selecting the axis whose rotation we want to lock, which in my case is the Y axis.
This is much better, but we are still not there yet, because the compartment does not stay at the correct distance from the brackets while it is being moved.
To solve this problem, we need to set the Origin of the compartment where the pin is located that connects the compartment to the reference bracket. To perform this operation, first I select the geometry at that point and choose the option Cursor To Selected from the menu I open using the shortcut SHIFT S.
Then, with the compartment selected in Object mode, I right click and choose Set Origin To 3D Cursor.
Now we can rotate the reference bracket around the rotation axis, which in my case is the Y axis, to open and close the upper compartment, all without using Armatures.
All right, that’s everything for this video as well! If you found it useful, you can thank me with a nice Like and by subscribing to the channel. See you soon!