building question regarding joints

OK, I just learned how to make joints thanks to someone (you know who you are). Next question -- is it *possible* to adjust the ends of the joint once it's created?

Specifically, I want to make the distance between the two jointed objects shorter so that it doesn't look like the bottom object is dangling in thin air, unattached to anything. When the joint gets created, regardless of distance, the object drops some way before starting to swing from an invisible axis.

If there's a way to do this, I wasn't finding it last night when I was playing with a limited P2P joint. >_<

Please let me know if this is possible.



(Lindens, this is an example of the questions that I'd expect to find in a building forum )

Pin both objects in the joint (disable "physics".

Remove the joint.

Move the objects to where you want them.

Create a new joint.

Unpin one or both objects.

...spin around touch your nose squack like a duck and spin four plates all while whistling the theme to chiago

couldn't ya make it just a tad more difficult for us?

roflmao ya know i had to yank your cord right!

Cat

Hmm. I'm at w*rk, so I can't try that out right now. But it's what I was doing last night, to some degree.

More details on what I was doing:

I'm building a hang glider. I was trying to attach the harness (two prisms and a hollowed cut cyclinder arranged and linked together so they look like a sling) to the frame (one cyclinder, not linked to anything at this point) at one point. Move it so that the harness is under the frame and appropriately placed. Select the harness, then the frame, and then make the joint. Right, good so far. Hit physics on the harness.

Watch as the harness drops some distance before starting to swing. It swings good, it just swings too low and looks like it's not attached to the glider. Try to figure out some way to shorten the distance between the joint pins. Start hitting head on desk.

---

Hrm. I'm going to have to experiment with linked objects jointed to something else. I was too frustrated and tired last night to do much experimenting. It occurs to me that the linkage could be doing interesting things to the joint in terms of the parent/child objects, no?

Thanks for the response, Andrew!

Yeah CC, the UI for joints needs some work. In fact...

Nergal, things get even more complicated when you are jointing linked objects. Here are some tips that should help.

Joints nodes are always at the "center of mass" of a primitive (not the "center of mass" of the object, and not the "geometric center" (where the selection axes show up)).

If you joint an already linked object, then the default primitive will be the root (highlights in yellow).

To joint to the center of a non-root primitive you must joint to that primitive _before_ you link it to others.

Orient all primitives just where you want them before you joint anything.

Keep everything pinned ("physics" not enabled) until all joints and links are complete.

HTH

I have found that linking things to a jointed object really screws up how the joint ends up working, most likely due to the weight you just added. You are saying to link the jointed object to other things, though (instead of things to the joint). Is there a difference??