planetary gears

[mtpeak2]

I saw this on youtube and thought this would be cool to try. This is animated using 2 control bones, but I could get it to 1 with expressions.

gear.mov

[Darkwing]

As per your usual, you never cease to amaze. I think what does it for me is the fact that you get things simplified down to things like 1 or 2 bones or sliders etc yet they make these fairly complex actions and things

[HomeSlice]

that's very cool Mark.

[John Bigboote]

Very interesting... how did you do all that with only 2 bones?

[Shelton]

That is awesome Mark

 

Steve

[johnl3d]

Nice

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, Mark!

[largento]

Very interesting... how did you do all that with only 2 bones?

 

I'm curious, too, Mark!

[mtpeak2]

Very interesting... how did you do all that with only 2 bones?

 

I'm curious, too, Mark!

 

 

Thanks everyone.

 

This is pretty simple.

 

The center gear (red, 48 teeth) drives the animation. The small gears (green, 24 teeth) are constrained to the red gear with a "roll like" constraint, with a roll scale of -200. The outer gear (blue, 96 teeth) is constrained to the red gear with a "roll like" constraint, with a roll scale of -50.

 

By rotating the red gear (control bone1), the rest of the gears will rotate. The results of the constraints are show in "gearA" video.

 

(Control bone2) is a parent bone of the whole rig. By rotating the parent bone in the same direction, but half the rotation, of the red gear, the blue gear will appear to stop ("gearB" video), countering the -50 roll scale.

 

By rotating the parent bone in the opposite direction of the red gear, with the same amount of rotation, the red gear will appear to stop, countering the rotation of the red gear ("gearC" video).

 

In all 3 videos, the red gear is constantly rotating, to drive the rotation of the other gears. The parent bone counters the rotation, of the red or blue gear, to create the illusion that the gears have stopped.

 

I have gotten it to 1 control bone by adding a null. Control bone1 and 2 have expressions added to the Z rotation. Rotating the null on the Z axis, rotates the red gear. Translating the null in the Z axis rotates the parent bone.

gearA.mov

gearB.mov

gearC.mov

[Shelton]

That is way to cool! And way above me!

 

Steve

[Paul Forwood]

Very clever and simply beautiful, Mark!

[williamgaylord]

Quite cool, indeed! Very clever!

 

I kind of miss some of the contests that used to go on. Or just the exercises like the "Pass the Ball". What about one in honor of Rube Goldberg, where each participant adds a new part to the overall mechanism? State a resulting action, like "flip the burger on the grill" or "deposit our dear departed Auntie Agatha's coffin into the grave---gracefully!" and start it with a simple mechanism and each participant adds a new mechanism that responds to the previous one. Each mechanism should be easy to add to a choreography as a working model that uses any A:M feature other than direct frame by frame manipulation: Use relationships, constraints, dynamics, etc., in the cleverest way you can work out so the control is very simple.