How can I rig a Rubik’s cube?

[William Miller]

I was trying to rig a Rubik’s cube when I discovered that an object cannot have more than one parent.  How can I allow a tile to be controlled by multiple centers, and how can I transfer control when it shifts?

[Adrian Bellworthy]

Hmmm,

This has got my brain ticking @williamatics .

I’m sure @waylow could come up with something. It seems relatively straight forward until you take into account different rotations.

A corner for example would need 3 different pivot points.

3 bones parented to one face bone, no , 3 tile bones parented to one cube bone parented to a face bone ,  hang on I still thinking……

[William Miller]

Wait.  I could just set each piece’s origin to the center of the cube.  Then I could just rotate all the pieces around a single axis.

[Parker Bourassa]

I think that’s the easiest way. Not a true “rig” in the typical sense, but good enough for a simple animation.

[Wayne Dixon]

Rigging a Rubix’s cube is very complicated.

I’ve never had to do it, but I think Parker is right.

The easiest way to “get it done”, is not to have a rig, just animate the objects.  (in Quaternion mode because Gimbal lock is highly likely).  But make sure each object’s origin is actually in the centre of the “Rubix’s Cube”.

I might be imagining things, but did I see a Rubix’s Cube with “Geo Nodes” recently?  I could have imagined it haha.

Maybe it would be possible??  But you might end up having to animate the vector values on nodes.

Every solution I can think of requires some kind of python scripting to dynamically transform the correct objects in the correct way.

[Author]

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