Need help with a basic animation rig

Support Animation and Rigging
1

i want to do an animation of a unique set of tracks

i don’t know how to and don’t have the time to learn

if anyone wants to help please do so

the design should look like the image that’s attached to this thread

tracks.jpg725×408 111 KB

the black dots on the image are PVC pipes used as spacers (so the belt rubs off on them)

the green line is the path of the belts (belts should be timing belts with the teeth on the outside)

the big wheel is 8 inches and the three small wheels are 5 inches each

the width for all the wheels, belt, and the spacers are 1.5 inches

the frame behind all of this is 1/4 inch

2

Why don’t you have the time to learn?

3

i attempted but failed several times when i reached the rigging part

plus i got a lot on my plate and don’t think such knowledge will be necessary in the recent future

4

check this out, i tried rendering as an blueprint image (learned from a tutorial) but the timing belt doesn’t render

i have done this many times before but never had such problem

any tips, suggestions, advice, etc…

the attached file is what i ended up with (i still want to do the animation though if anyone wants to submit)newtracks.blend (667 KB)

5

Youre almost there. You have the tracks and the wheels. For the animation you need to do three things:

  1. insert keyframes for the big wheel to rotate. (select place on timeline, rotate wheel, press i -> rotation)
  2. add constraint for the tracks (select tracks, add constraint of “transform” type, select the big wheel as target, and map the Y rotation of 0 to 360 degrees into an x translation of (2PIbigwheelradius)
  3. add constraint for the small wheels, to make them rotate based on the big wheels rotation.

And here’s a bit of advice for asking help on the blenderartists forum: Many people are willing to give advice/help on how to do something. Just a few are willing to do something for you. So even if you are very limited in your time, it is better to ask “how can I do this…” than “Can you do this for me?”. You’ll not only get a reply sooner, but you’ ll also learn more out of it.

6

thanks jonim80r i’ll remember your advice the next time i post

I’ll try out your instructions but would you please finish this thing?

please

7

The belt didn’t render because it needed “duplication” set back to none in the object properties of the Cube.

You almost had the animation. Just needed to keyframe the object “Cube” to translate on its X axis.

Currently dont need to rotate the pulleys because they have no defining markings that will show them rotating in a render.

I also tightened the belt up a bit so it tracks closer to the pulleys.

newtracks_002.blend

On second look I notice that that the pulleys do have a wire material set so they would be seen rotating in an animation. I aint going there. Look back at jonim8or’s suggestions if you want to do that.

EDIT: Because I’d never done it before, I went back and did the pulley rotation. I also looked at the original model and the proximity of the belt to the small pins, and realized you probably didn’t want it tightened.

You can choose which you want, if either.

newtracks_003.blend

8

thanks a lot BentFX, this really means a lot