In this week’s lesson we learnt how to make a piston movement system and the principles of animation and binding, firstly we made a very simple wheel piston system which is a piston cartridge sleeve and a wheel disc, the way we used this was by adjusting the shape of the polygons and adjusting the way the vertices and various other tools were manipulated to do this.
We have added positioners to the ends of the piston so that we can ensure that our piston is running in the direction we want it to, and this requires the use of the Aim constrain tool to ensure the accuracy of this part. The constraint needs to be made by selecting the target to control first. I used target constraints and point constraints that needed to follow the movement of the flywheel in each section. First I used the piston set to target constrain the piston positioner, then the piston set to target constrain the flywheel positioner and finally the piston set to point constrain the flywheel positioner.
We then learnt how to create a rotating belt, in addition to a belt with materials, we also briefly learnt how to use MASH to create the illusion of a rotating belt on our machine. The animation curve was then adjusted so that the belt rotation was balanced. In the animation editor I created a top curved shape and a bottom curved shape, I needed to make these two points move up and down as the belt moved so that the belt did not move mechanically and looked a little more realistic.