Creating a Double Ended Telescope

Support Modeling
1

Greetings!

How do I model a double-ended telescope in Blender?

Attached is a mockup created in MSPaint to show what I’m talking about…

If each section is retractable that would be great, but it’d be fine just as is ['cept 3D and in Blender!]

Thanks,

Alec Taylor

Attachments


2

well just add some cylinders with appropriate size and may be extrude inward to give some thickness

that’s all
then you can relocate theses cylinders to take the shape you need

in this case you could laso have a mirror modifier cause it’s symetrical around Y or Z axis !

happy 2.5

3

Thanks, and how do I animate the opening, closing and tilting? [from both ends]

Imagine this is the aforementioned telescope —[]—

I need to be able to animate it as []------ and ------[] and []— and —[]

Any ideas on how I can do this?

Thanks,

Alec Taylor

4

can do it with parent child relationship

i opend a new thred on this cause having some problem with initial animation values

but be back tomorrow i guess

happy 2.5

5

For telescoping gizmos like that you use Track To Constraint. So each cylinder points in the right direction as you push and pull it out. Keep in mind that Track To will point to object center of a target object. There for pay attention to where it is and how things are orientated. By using Local axis Orientation helps to see which axis needs to point. Parenting the whole thing will keep all parts together.

6

i tried in this thread

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=206747

but could not do the Keu framing with the different cylinder

not certain why it does not follow normally with keyframing
may be due to IPO curves at wronh place ?

happy 2.5

7

Sometimes you can use “Mirror” so that an object (that “really” consists of “only one half”) appears to consist of “two mirrored halves.”

You might simply find that you need to be very precise in setting your keyframes. For example, first you set them, then you go into the IPO window and click on the control-points and numerically specify their exact (x,y) position values. A bit tedious, but worth it.