i am making a railroad engine.
the wheels move but the thing will be stationary in the center of the picture.
therefore i have to show the railroad ties (sleepers for some) moving.
i thought of a path with ties distributed along and then make the path move.
is that the best way?
how do i do that!
the pic is from the internet.
thanks all
If all the railroad ties are identical, you can create a linear cyclic animation for the railroad ties.
Create an object with enough many railroad ties, it needs to be larger than the camera view.
Make a location keyframe at frame 1, go at frame 10 (you can change this number), move your railroad ties object as far as the distance between two railroad ties, then create another location keyframe.
In the graph editor, the interpolation mode for this animation chanel needs to be linear.
Select your chanel in the graph editor and add a cycles modifier.
Now when you play your animation the railroad ties seem endless.
Here’s an example .blend files.
Attachments
railroadTies.blend (404 KB)
sounds great!
thanks
but i have 2.49b and when i click Alt A nothing happens.
i don’t want to switch to 2.5 near the end of a large project
suggestions welcome
I ran it in 2.5 and it is exactly what i need.
cannot actually use 2.5 yet - far too advanced!
Sorry I didn’t see that you edited your post.
With blender 2.49 you cannot play an animation made with blender 2.5, but you can get the same result than my blend with Blender 2.49.
The only one difference is : in Blender 2.49 there is no modifiers for channels in the graph editor.
When you have a linear translation from frame 1 to frame 10, you need to select your channel in the graph editor and click “Curve” “Extend Mode” “Cyclic”
Here’s a blend made with Blender 2.49
Attachments
railroadTies249.blend (142 KB)
thanks - this is all very new and strange to me!
i added a lamp and there is a camera there - so why don’t i see anything when i use f12
i will need to see it in the video!
thanks
update do sequence made it work - what i that for?
PS how do i vary the speed? with the curve thingy?
The “Do Sequence” option was enabled, I don’t know why but it’s useless for us and when you disable it the render does work.
This option is needed when you work on editing in the video sequence editor.
If you want to tweak the speed in the graph editor, you can move the second keyframe along the time (X axis).
Anyway, I think it could be interesting to try to recreate my scene by yourself if you want to learn how it works.
thanks very much