Hello, I am completely new to blender. I want to know if its possible to animate a ferris wheel to slowly creak around. Im trying to find the right program to make a short 30 second clip opening title for a movie. Just like the spinning Universal Studio one, or the LionsGate Video mechanical doors that open up.
That would be child’s play in Blender.
For a beginner, it would be the perfect first project. Probably get a real nice vid out of that, too. You put some pretty strings of lights on it, I bet it would be real pretty.
Do a YouTube search on some tutorials for basic animation in Blender, that’s a good place to start.
If you don’t come up with anything you like, write me in a couple of days (I’m in the middle of new freelance project I have to finish by Sunday…) and I’ll drop a few quick basic tips on you.
It would be easy. Don’t sweat it.
It’s possible to do anything in Blender.
Thanks for the information! Its great to find out that this is something thats actually able to be done. Ill start searching youtube right now. But I might get back with you if nothing suits my purpose! Thanks again.
Yeah, cool. It sounds like a very nice idea for a project. Take your time, model it well, it will probably be very nice.
The motion itself will be very easy to do.
The hard part will be the modelling, but there’s plenty of tuts that will give you some ideas. And the lights will be the key thing, I think.
And when you get it to a point where you think it’s coming along well, or if you get really stuck, post some shots of it or some basic animation of it in the “work in progress” section and ask for help on the things you’re worried about. You’ll get a lot of good feedback.
To start, what I would do would just be to go with the standard 250 frames in the default. I would add a cylinder, flip it on its side so that the z axis is along the global x axis, size it way up, then scale the LOCAL Z axis down till it has the basic rough dimension of a wheel. Then I would “I rotation” keyframe on frame one, go to frame 250 and rotate it ON LOCAL Z so that it spins a few times, and add “I rotation” keyframe on 250.
Go to the Graph Editor and you can play around with the keyframes till you get speed of movement you want. If you want it to move continuously without slowing down and speeding up at the beginning and end, look in the graph editor in the Key menu, select Interpolation Mode, and select Linear (if all your keyframes are selected (you can use “B” for bounding box select to make all your keyframes active…)) But that’s the basics. That’s it. That’s all you have to do for the movement.
Here’s a quick tip about the rigging of the gondolas (I’m not sure it is the correct word) :
When the wheel turns, every gondola needs to have its floor turned toward the ground.
So, create an empty for each gondola axis, parent these empties to the wheel.
Now you need to be sure that the origin (rotation centre) of each gongola is placed where its rotation axis is. (ctrl+alt+shift+C and choose “origin to 3D cursor” with the 3D cursor correctly placed to move the origin of the gongola if it’s needed)
Select each gondola and add on it a “copy location” constraint with one of the empties as target.
This way, when the wheel will turn, every gondola will move around the wheel with its floor turned toward the ground. Later if you want to add some sways on the gondolas it will be possible.
I sense a potential use of the hinge bone.
If thats just the basics then I’m in trouble! But really, I just need to experiment with it I guess, to learn a few moves. I was thinking either Blender or After Effects, but from what I’ve seen, Blender is the way to go. So thanks for the input on how to start this thing. Right now I’m not feeling very confident…
One more thing, I watched a basic beginners tutorial and the guy said click the middle mouse button to grab like the whole plain or something, and it showed him rotating and moving the mesh grid and looking up under it,etc. I dont have a middle button, Im on a laptop. Is there another button I can use to do that?
Yeah. You can “emulate three button mouse.” Go to User Preferences to set that up. I’ve never done it. Again, YouTube search…
don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it. Everyone has to start somewhere. And the other guys have some good tips.
You’ll do it, you’ll see. It will be cool.
Yes “emulate three buttons mouse” should work.
Once this option is enabled you can press alt+LMB instead of MMB.