How do I keep a bone pointed in a single direction?

[LordBiBo]

So I am trying to animate a character who wears a robe with sleeves that are much longer than his arms and I want the end of the sleeves to droop downwards no matter what position his arms or body happen to be in. So basically I want a bone that remains pointed downwards despite what the rest of the arm wants to do. If I can somehow constrain it within a certain angle with bone dynamics so that it flaps a bit, that is even better, but one step at a time.

In searching for the answer, the only thing I could find was this: viewtopic.php?t=15726
That looks perfect, but the file is missing and I cannot manage to duplicate what the post says. I can get one bone to stay pointed down relative to a second bone, but I can't figure out how to get multiple bones to work together for this.

I am using anime studio debut 9 by the way if it makes a difference.

[Víctor Paredes]

Lostmarble wrote a script for that:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1928&p=10402&hilit=DANGLER
It's makes a bone to always point downward.
You can create a new bone, make it child of the pointing downward one and rotate it to any angle you want (it's an old script, but I just checked it on v9.2 and works fine).

[funksmaname]

so in theory using the script selgin mentioned - you can make a tiny bone that only points down, then create a child of it that has bone dynamics and only rig stuff to the child/dynamic bone (not the pointy down bone)... that way you get the swinging effects.

[LordBiBo]

That was perfect. Thanks so much! I need to play around with the bone dynamics more to get them to look more natural, but so far it is exactly what I had in mind.

[Víctor Paredes]

That was perfect. Thanks so much! I need to play around with the bone dynamics more to get them to look more natural, but so far it is exactly what I had in mind.

For bone dynamics I recommend you to go to Animation>Allow Frame Skipping and uncheck it.
Dynamic bones uses the info of each of the frames to simulate the movement. When that menu is checked, the software skips some frames, so the dynamics you see in the main window could not be the same you'll see in the final render.

Now, to edit dynamics, the best way is to select the dynamic bones you want, hit play and now open the bone constraints pop-up window. Once it's open and the animation is playing, you can edit the torque/spring/damping numbers by dragging right click to right or left (I think you also can use the mouse wheel). This way you will see in real time how your bones are working.