Setup for clock hands

[GruberR]

Greetings!

 

Since I couldn't find any posting about this and came up with a working solution I thought I'd share - hope this is the right place for it.

 

The problem was: How to easily animate an analog clock (hour/minute hand) without having to calculate movement. Think of a "time-lapse" kind of animation that should show a realistic time of day.

 

My solution:

1.: create two bones in the clock model: "MinuteHand" and "HourHand" and attach the CPs.

2.: create a "percentage" pose on the model, call it "TimeOfDay". Use "settings" to set te maximum value to 1440 (60*24 minutes to cover the entire day)

3.: select the minute hand bone in the relationship and set the rotate-y property to an expression. "..|..|..|..|..|User Properties.TimeOfDay*600"

4.: repeat step 3 for the hour hand and set "..|..|..|..|..|User Properties.TimeOfDay*50"

 

Expressions might not do much for the character animation but they can ease mechanical prop animation. A more complete reference for possible values would really be nice.

 

Would there be another way to do the same without keying the hands every 90 degrees and still use only one slider to set both of them?

 

Kind regards,

Roman Gruber

[robcat2075]

Would there be another way to do the same without keying the hands every 90 degrees and still use only one slider to set both of them?

 

There is. You can set the bones to use Euler interpolation instead of the default Quaternion.

 

Euler can do any degree rotation, even larger than 360°, just by setting a start and end. Euler works well for bones that need to rotate only on one axis.