CompuServe Thread

Ken, << Subject: Bicycle Chain/Gear Problem: Getting the chain to move around the gear without having to keyframe ourselves to death Solution: (please fill in the blank) >> Can you get a single chain link to follow a path created in the shaper/lofter correctly around the 2 gears? When this is yes, you can then create 'n' copies of the link and attach each one to it's own individual path. Let's make 99 copies of the link. (starting to sound excessive but so far minimum key framing).. Let's say you have 100 frames and let's say 100 chain links all located at the same spot and all moving at the same time around the gears on 100 paths. You can go into track info and "slide" each link's initial position to an individual frame position. So, each link occupies a seperate location, each link moves around the gears and except for the excessive sliding done in track info it was pretty painless.

Depending upon how close you get to the chain, you may be able to acheive the look with a single non-moving object and an animated map. I am assuming that you also have access to Animator. 1. Create a 2-D animation of a chain-link that moves from bottom to top, and tiles so that when playing back it looks like a continuous chain moving past. 2. Create the center-line to your chain, load it as a path in the lofter and loft a rectangle with mapping coords ON. Set the length repetition to reflect the number of links you want, and the perimeter repeat to 2. 3. Create a material using the link animation as your texture map and apply it to your "chain" object. 4. Do it again, now that you see how it works, and take into account the speed of the map flic, the proper wrapping of the texture, opacity mapping and tiling. Once you've got it right, add it to your map library and it can be used for chains of any length without all that crazy linking and keyframing.