#Animating an Escalator
21 messages in this thread
Ideas anyone? I'm trying to animate the steps of an escalator. Each step
emerges from a floor plane, travels forward a couple of feet, ascends the
height of the escalator at a constant angle, levels out, travels forward a
couple of feet, then goes down into the escalator to travel back down to the
first floor. I've created a nice path in the Shaper and assigned the first step
to it-it works great. But if I try linking the other steps to that first step,
or import a path individually for each step, they move as a group up the path,
rather than sequentially one after the other.
Rich,
Create your steps and animate one step so it looks and acts right.
In KF, use Object/Tracks/Copy to transfer the tracks to all other steps.
In track info, use the slide button to slide All Tracks forward for each step,
i.e, step2 slides to frame3, step3 to frame 5, etc.
Remember to increase the total number of frames to allow for the sliding.
Try the concept on a couple of boxes first.
Good luck
TedB
-Ted Boardman
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Thanks, Ted, I'll give it a try.
The problem is that when you copy an object's tracks to another object, the
path itself offsets to the center of the 2nd object. So if the steps are delta:
x=11" & y=6", then the path delta will be the same.
I'm trying to figure out how all of the steps can share the same path at the
same x,y,z posion.
Check out the Relative/Absolute buttons. See page 8-68 of the docs.
– Jack
Rich
Use the absolute button when copying the tracks. All the steps will jump to
the same location, then sliding the keys will position them correctly on the
path.
TedB
-Ted Boardman
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Ted,
Well, I've tried everything, and can't get these steps to behave correctly. I
uploaded a file "escalatr.zip" into Library 4 if you want to take a look at it.
If someone can solve the problem, I'll donate the mesh and animation into the
library permanently.
-Rich
Rich
I'll have a look when I get a minute and let you know what I can find.
Later
TedB
-Ted Boardman
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in the 1993 autodesk demo tape there is a very nice escalator, maybe look at
the credits and find the company that did that.,
Sherwood,
Yeah, in the scene with the two Brits in the mall. I check it out and pass it
along.
Thanks
TedB
-Ted Boardman
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Rich,
Try taking that first step you've got and Copy Tracks (or Insert from a saved
file) to all of the other stairs. Then offset the animations of each of the
other steps by enough frames to seperate them, and probably "repeat" the
animations.
– Ron
Easier said than done. Did you try it on the model?
Rich
I took a few minutes yesterday afternoon to make a very simple example of the
escalator. It only has five steps that travel around the path, but it should
show the process. I'll email the escal.prj file to you and you can try me at
603-431-4334 (east coast) if you have any questions.
Good luck
TedB
-Ted Boardman
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Hi ya Ted,
<I took a few minutes yesterday afternoon to make a very simple example of the
escalator. It only has five steps that travel around the path, but it should
show the process. I'll email the escal.prj file to you and you can try me at
603-431-4334 (east coast) if you have any questions.>
Could you please email me a copy of that .prj file as well?
I'm doing something similar, I have a bunch of racks that hang from a track and
need to follow the path of the track. I have been successful in copying the
30+ racks in the 3D Editor and giving each an offseted path to follow in the
Keyframer…but it takes a long time to render any kinda animation. So, I was
gonna try to use the Object\Move (with the shift button) in the Keyframer as
this only makes an "instances" of the object and reduces rendering time. The
only problems is that it is painstaking. Do you have any suggestions as to
what the best way to do this? Any advice would be helpful.
Cheers,
Al Dass — CyberPunk, social deviant at large.
try making it a stairway instead of escalator. that should work.
Now there's an enlightened idea.
Hi there,
I'm new to this forum, but have a probably fitting question. I need to animate
army tank tracks that get blown away! Any ideas?
Regards:
Tibor Molnar
It looks like you'll be faced with the same problem I had… and I was never
able to achieve the result I was looking for. However… Ted Boardman from this
forum was kind enought to offer the following technique, which may work for
you:
Make instances of each of the tank treads in the Keyframer, then use
Tracks/Copy with the absolute button on.
Then in Track Info, slide all tracks for the second instance one or two frames
ahead.
Hope that helps.
Tibor,
>> I need to animate army tank tracks that get blown away! Any ideas?<<
PMJI, the way this is usually done is to create a full cycle animation path for
one "link" of the tanktrack in the shaper/lofter. You apply the path to one
"link" and turn repeat on and use path follow. Next copy tracks from 1 "link"
to the others. You then slide the position keys by a few frames for the next
link and the next and the next. This way the tracks do exactly the same, only
they are offset in time. For the explosion make a dummy and use as a parent for
all the links. At the time of the explosion you would scale the dummy object
having turned off scaling for each of the objects in link info. Throw in some
random keys for the objects during the explosion.
Excellent Idea for the moving stairs, Ted.
Mark.
Thanks Mark, but it wasn't my idea, that one has been around for a long time in
the form of flying logos where the letters follow each other along a path.
It can be used for all sorts of things, however.
Have fun
TedB
-Ted Boardman
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