Ok so I’ve built the SA-5 launcher shown below. I want to animate the launcher so that:
the rail arm can elevate from its resting position to 65 degrees and
the rail arm and base can rotate (traverse) on the pedestal 360 degrees.
I’ve read some tuts and watched greybeard’s key frame vid, but am unsure if this is what I need. Most of the tutorials covered character animation, but here I don’t want the mesh to deform as the parts move. I read about bones, but it seems that i would have to make the rail arm and base separate objects to parent them to the bones. As I am exporting this to Ogre, I think that they require a single mesh. I know this is a very simple animation, but it seems like there is no tutorial that covers something this basic. Any suggestions?
but here I don’t want the mesh to deform as the parts move. I read about bones, but it seems that i would have to make the rail arm and base separate objects to parent them to the bones.
A mesh doesn’t have to be connected to be a single object. ie. add a cube and while in edit mode move the 3d cursor and add a sphere. While the mesh isn’t connected it is still one object and a single mesh. You the select the verts you want and put them in a vertex group. After you parent your armature to the mesh you select which bone controls which vertex group. You will have to read through the manual for the details.
Thanks greybeard, I think I’m getting my confusion from the Ogre exporter, which only supports FK bones. I’ll try to set up the bones and go from there. Also, I just wanted to add that your tutorials were extraordinarily helpful. They’re the single reason I’m able to build these models for the sim. I went from no modeling experience to making real units for the game in just 2 weeks thanks to you! If this forum had a toast smiley, I’d put one up!
