tlehnhaeuser Posted March 3, 2004 Share Posted March 3, 2004 Attached is an image of our design delima. We want to create a 3D pulley system with belt. 1.) Need help on the best way to create the intended 3D belt. 2.) Need help how to have belt "elongate" during animation creation when yellow part moves up and down. Any feedback is welcomed. Thanks Tom Lehn... Magnacad Design Inc. stretchy2.gif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Twining Posted March 3, 2004 Share Posted March 3, 2004 Tom- Not quite sure the best way to make the belt, but I would go with a 3d sweep (for starters). For reasons below, I would make the thing in 2 parts. As for the animation, since there is really no way to make a part change dimension, what you might want to do is make your belt from 2 parts (which overlap at an "unstretched" state). This way, (as long as you have 2 parallel sections of the belt) as you move the sections away from eachother, the overlap will fill the gap and look like the belt is elongating. Of corse, this will look a lot better if the part edges are turned off (which I assume they will be in an animation) so you don't see the overlap (the other option is to make the belt black (like you do) so you don't see the edges. MikeT Edit: After looking at your sketch a little closer, I don't see any parallel sections of your belt...since that means that the geometry will be consistantly changing as you reposition your parts. My unprofessional, overly lazy opinion is that you can't do it without a lot of pain and suffering. If you have Windows XP (or some movie editing software) you might be able to hack together individual frames of movies of your belt from different "stretch" states ( which would require you to render lots of individual frames after tweaking your belt geometry....) but like I said... for the lazy man, it can't be done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Floris Stam Posted March 3, 2004 Share Posted March 3, 2004 Here's something to consider when trying to animate this. (Hit F5 to start animation again) Floris Stam IronCAD.nl 1.gif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest svangeldern Posted March 3, 2004 Share Posted March 3, 2004 Tom, How about this.... Steve belt.ics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tlehnhaeuser Posted March 3, 2004 Author Share Posted March 3, 2004 Thanks Guys, All of your suggestions help me trremendously. As I see it I will have to create multiple parts that overlap (possible intellishapes that are animated) to get this look. Once I get it completed. I'll post it here. Thanks again Tom Lehn... Magnacad Design Inc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhahn Posted March 11, 2004 Share Posted March 11, 2004 Tom, We did a similar "flexible" design animation of a hose wrapping onto a reel recently. You don't need to "overlap" two features. I'll try to find the file and post it. Essentially, what we did was create two "fixed location" intellishapes in a part that were seperated by a distance, then create a loft feature between them. The animation then moves one of the shapes, the loft grows to fit the distance and will account for any "mis-alignment." In our case the hose was being "layered" onto the reel (side to side motion) as the reel rotated. Jesse Engineering Innovation, Inc. - IronCAD Reseller Cedar Rapids, IA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Lohman Posted March 11, 2004 Share Posted March 11, 2004 Ooh Jesse, I never thought about using a loft with associated faces for a stretchy animation. That's a very cool idea! Here's an example of what Jhahn was speaking of. It's two cylinders that are both shapes under the same part; then between the cylinders is a 2 profile loft that has both profiles associated with the inner faces of the cylinders. I then created a little custom smart motion path for the top cylinder and exported it and voila, a stretchy/boingy part. I initially would have suggested using the overlapping parts; and using the overlapping method will significantly reduce the export time and headaches with invalid geometry. But using this loft method does product a very interesting result. When using the loft method though; every frame of the animation requires a regeneration of the parts: so the export took a very long time and my first 3 attempts actually crashed because the geometry was too complex. Attached is an animated gif and a scene file for the stretchy animation . stretchy.gif stretchy.ics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tlehnhaeuser Posted March 11, 2004 Author Share Posted March 11, 2004 Thanks Guys, I like the strechy boingy. Our end result was done using intellishapes that removed material. It wasn't 100% but actually was good since the animation was so large you really couldn't see the minor imperfections. But next time I'm going with Jesses/Chris' approach. Thanks again Tom Lehn... Magnacad Design Inc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Twining Posted March 12, 2004 Share Posted March 12, 2004 Hell yeah! Now that is/was a good idea. I love how just when you think something can't be done, someone comes up with a cool IronWOOD hack that makes everything easy. Shoot... I would like to see Pro/Motion do that! MikeT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Wim Posted March 12, 2004 Share Posted March 12, 2004 can you give us the ics so i can see what you did with the locator-curve pls thx Wim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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