Rolling Scissors

Artwork Works in Progress
#1

So I’ve wanted to do an animation involving the infamous dog fighting maneuver, The Rolling Scissors, for a while now.

However, I’m not sure how to keep it from looking flat. The planes have to essentially meet in the middle (“pass closely”) on every pass.

Is it really that flat in real life? Or are my curves wrong? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

It looks nice from the Side.


But in perspective view you can see that all the curves are pretty much aligned with a 45º plane. I bent the outer tips in a bit to try and “curve” it more, but I don’t think that really helped.

RollingScissors.blend (1.1 MB)

For reference:

#2

I would start out with 2d curves (or path), then after you get the “top down” view right, change them to 3d and add the height.

#3

Well, the top down was aligned. Mostly that gave me a flat 45º yo-yo. Which I didn’t like. But then I made it worse by trying to curve the ends. (Whoops!)

I decided to allow the flat-yo-yo, but make it more vertical, and have both curves angled a bit differently. It still doesn’t look the prettiest in the overall view, but with a little camera work I think that it looks halfway decent (well, by my awful standards :P) in an animation.

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The camera’s still a bit jerky. I’ll have to work on that.