cable drag animation setup ?

[lukx]

Who is smooth with mechanical anim and could advice me how to set up this kind of thing in 3dsmax:



there will be cable in the middle that will control this.

[Donald2B]

I would start by creating bones for each link with their pivot centered on the rotation axis of each link. Then I would probably use spline IK and then just animate the spline sliding forward. I think that should work.

I've done a LOT of chains and gear rigging lately and I am pretty sure that's what I used for that. I will try and find one of those files later this morning to see what I did. They have already been archived, so it will take me a few moments to find them.

EDIT: On second look, it looks like the animation of a tank tread with the rest of it missing. There are probably several tutorials out there that would cover tank tread animation and just re-purpose that for your needs.

[joconnell]

Ah! This is a little bit of a head fuck!

What you have to do is figure out how long i your spline is that the treads are on, find out how fast your vehicle is moving forwards and then work out the distance in units it's covering. Lastly you've gotta get this distance per second as a percentage compared to the track. So say for example the length of the track is 15 units and over 100 frames your tread travels 30 units, then it's done 2 full lengths of the track so if you're animating with a path deform then you can set a key on the percent value at frame 100 with a value of 200%. You could easily do the same with path constraint helpers and have your bones running between those.

Here's a sample scene, I've used the measure utility to find out that my spline is 14.283 cm, so I've been kind and animated my tread 14.283 units over 100 frames. If I set my path deform to 100% at frame 100, the treads stick to the ground.

https://copy.com/vqGzGLVeSi2j

If you animated your tank along a path, you could probably do something quite clever with an expression to link the main animation helper with the path helpers but it'd take a bit more head scratching than I can do right now. Do a search for automatic wheel animation expression and it should get you a few good hints.

[lukx]

Thanks guys. John it's not for a tank . It's like on the gif. Just a piece of "thingy" moving.

[joconnell]

The principle is the same either way. I'd parent the spline you're using as the tread path to whatever control is moving it, and then as the path is moving use it to drive a path deform or constraint and you're in business.

[tricky]

We recently created a piece of animation very similar to this. I think we used the Clone modifier to create the links, and then created a spline so that the segments match each pivot of the chain link. We then (I think) used a skin wrap modifier to attach the chain to the line and simply use a bend modifier on the line to animate.

EDIT: Just checked. It wasn't a skin wrap modifier. It was Path Deform Binding applied to the chain object, using the spline as the pick object. Are you creating a cable management system per chance?

[lukx]

Richard it's some kind of thing used by oil company equipment. Still in process of getting the deal so I don't know exactly what it is.