Question: How to put two joints on an object, one pivot and one moving?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I’m trying to make/animate a pump jack. The attached is what I have so far. I was able to make the upper lever pivot, and the motor spin. You can do this by selecting “Motor Axle” or “Lever Pivot” (I’m using 2.5 so it’s easy to see all names), and simply rotating on the y axis (red for the objects, green for the world).

To use this layout, I would need to make steel rods connected to the cylinders at the back of the lever (tube.003) and the cylinders at the top of the T’s attached to the motor (), and be required to follow both animated paths. I don’t know if that’s possible, so instead I was thinking maybe I could make the steel rod the child of the T’s cylinders, then make the lever up top the child of the steel rod, and then add a ‘joint’ on the cylinder (Lever Pivot) so that it’s required to pivot on that cylinder.

This is my first animation so I’m really new to this. How can I get this animation to work without moving the steel rod individually?

Attachments

Mine.blend (485 KB)

2

A while back someone else was asking the same thing, I mentioned using an armature. I created a video tutorial on how to rig one with an armature, you can view it here:

Randy

3

Thanks! I wasn’t expecting to find such an exact answer :slight_smile:
I was thinking about using armatures, but as I stated, I have no experience with animation.