chain to gear

[Nicohk92]

Hello all,

I have this gear structure on the left and need to animate the chain around it.

I got the wheel structure to work with physics.

I made the chain by drawing the white band, and the black little dents inside were done by using a brush and modifying brush spacing.

Now I'm not sure how to make the chain dents rotate. Should I make them another way? How would you go about it?


Thanks

[slowtiger]

I'd solve this much easier with 2 parts: 1 part would be the chain rotating with the wheel, the 2nd part would be the straight chain moving to and fro the wheel. A bit of masking, and that's it.

[jezjones29]

Is there any reason why you want to use physics to do this? Although this feature is very cool, there are often other ways to achieve the same end result - often with more control too.
This is one way to do it:
https://www.animestudiotutor.com/shared_files?id=164

[Nicohk92]

Yes Slowtiger, I was thinking of doing that, i think I'll stick with it.


Jones thanks for the share. Still trying to figure out the file as it seems very few keyframes in play for the whole rotation. Pretty cool.


Thanks guys

[Mejin]

Wow @jezjones29 - do you have a tutorial for that?
I don't get it how you've manipulated the chain so accurately.
:/ If I try that it looks like crap...
Have you placed every singe bone to the next position? Or is there any trick I don't get?

Greetings,
Mejin

[jezjones29]

Hi Mejin. As there are only two keyframes needed it didn't take long to set up. If the first parent bone is moved the whole chain moves, so with onion skin turned on, it's a simple case of rotating a few bones back into position on the new keyframe.
In this example, once complete, I added some keyframes to the last but one frame to loop back to the first, then deleted the last keyframes as they were no longer needed - but I could have added some extra keyframes after the end and looped to frame 2 - but that way you have three sets of keyframes, but it is easier to edit.

I'm sure there are other ways to do it - this way you have more control and can make the chain move the way you want - extra keyframes could be made if needed. But as you say it is a bit fiddly.

[Mejin]

Hello jezjones29!

Thank you for your explanation.
Well, I tried to move the parentbone - and it went a 'little' bit out of place...
maybe I'm just not practiced enough with the rotation of the bones...
it got just worse... X-)

But yes, I thought maybe onion-skin is the way... I just got frustrated as I saw that these are just 3 Keys and
as I tried to reproduce that animation I failed with an awkward looking chain. Haha!