Below is my first attempt at Locomotive modelling and Rigging (well not first to be honest, first “serious” attempt precisely). I’ve modelled a Reno (Circa 1910) by Virginia and Truckee Railroad. Now not much pictures were available of this model so I made this from a side view of one I could find. Work’s still in progress, the driver’s cabin is still just 2D, the rear wheel in stuck in it and else… I just wanted to know how on earth can I rig this engine and animate it to move. I tried several stuff but either it was too advanced for me or caused many other problems. I want to know the proper way to rig this engine. I’m still very much new to Blender, I’ve only modelled a few buildings and made a few intros, however it is the first time I’m doing such a thing so treat me as a beginner.
Just added random colours so that you guys can see what’s where.
P.S - When I render my models in cycles I get a lot of noise in the rendered image( the image is grainy). Is that because of my low spec system?
P.P.S- This is to be used in a game(in Unity 3D)… After I rig it there shouldn’t be any problem animating it in Unity right? Also I noticed that the vertex count was pretty high (nearly 85K), is that going to be a problem?
okay so here is a way, i am going to give you a picture and what each bones properties. the blocks are the wheels, resize this for use on your model. bone 3 goes at the piston arm.
okay bone W1 is the Main bone.
Bone 5 is extruded from bone W1.
Bone 1 is extruded from Bone 5 and has a Track To constraint with the target being empty 1.
Empty 1 is at the end of Bone 1 and 4 and is parented to bone 4.
Bone W2 is a copy of Bone W1 and has a copy Rotation Constraint.
Bone 4 is extruded from Bone W2.
Bone 2 is extruded from Bone 4 and has a Track To constraint with the target being empty 2
Empty 2 is at the end off bone 2 and the beginning of Bone 3 and parented to Bone 3
Bone 3 has a Location Limit constraint with X and Y off and Zmin and Zmax are the height of the piston arm.
Now Parent the left wheel to Bone W1, right wheel to Bone W2, tie between wheels to Bone 1, Tie from wheel to piston arm to Bone 2 and piston arm to Bone 3.
i think i got everything in there, hope this helps
Very well thank you but I already figured out a way to do the rigging… This one’s going in my current loco.
Hmm so what about animating everything now?
in the explanation above i used bones that way when the back wheel is turned the other wheel and piston move accordingly. if you want to make it move animate the location with key frames and animate the back bone to make the wheels turn.
