How to Procedurally or Physically animate a complicated machine?

Support Animation and Rigging
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Hello there,

I have embarked upon a project, and I’m now stuck on the animation stage. The modelling was easy, but I’d like to animate it procedurally, or by physics elements and not each part separately. Please see this video, as it is what I’m building.

I’d like to organize the animation in a way, where I must only rotate the large wheel and all the other parts will move in coordination. As seen from the video, there’s a crank which is driven by a piston, and that crank has a gear which drives another gear. There’re two arms off-set on that larger gear causing the arms to move back and fourth. Then, there’s the lever activating the two small valves, and the other arm moves a rocker.

How may I go about this? Animation is not my strength, please help. :slight_smile:

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You’ll need to rig, you can’t escape it, but you can use drivers to make the animation more procedural.

This guy is very good at rigging and animating machines. Watch his videos to get better understanding

2 Likes
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Here’s another tutorial that might help.

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Welcome :tada:…

even if you use any other physical simulation app… you have to setup all the data so that the simulation can do a proper simulation…

So… there is no magic button :wink:.