Chains

Once again ive been looking at things in far too much detail and decided that my lights needed attaching to the lighting rig, i have done this with the use of chains. At first i created all the links of my chain by making one using a regtangle spline, then making it viewable in the view ports and the render. Once i had this base image i used the array tool to clone it multiple times and make it rotate with each clone. With my chain now made i had to manipulate it so it looked right, at first i was just using the rotate tool which was very painstaking and annoying, i eventually gave up with this and went in search of a better way. I came accross a tutorial for making chains which used the SplineIK solver tool. To use this i first had to attach all the chains to each other, with this done i could select a link at one end of the chain, hit the SplineIK solver button then click the link at the opposite end, this then meant that the whole chain could be manipulatedinto whatever shape i wanted. All that was left was to create a 'helper' to drag the points of the chain out. This was done with a simple line spline (addint vertices as i drew it out), then in the motion tab on the right hand side (with one of the links selected) i could add the line as a shape in the IK solver drop down. This was all setup now and ready to manipulate, all i did for this was select the vertices on the line and drag them out to move the chain.

This worked very well however took some getting used to, i am very pleased that i learnt this skill and think it will be very helpful in the future.