So here’s the deal.
I am doing a project for a company, but they were using ProEngineer as program so I had to export it as STEP and import it into 3DS. Now, this worked fine, except that the bones/animation constraints were lost. (as you probably know, since I used STEP as format)
And I am now trying to set up the correct constraints/or such in order to begin animating. But I am having problems with this certain one. There is a couple of “sticks” that need to be aligned in a same angle while they are spinning around. Whit the method I am currently using they sort of “hops out” of the place where they are supposed to be stuck, and can’t find the reason for this. I’ve used lookat constraints.
I’ve attached a video hopefully showing the way they are supposed to look. They are supposed to be locked in a certain angle, so that when everything rotates the sticks will pump out oil. The other thing is that I need them also to be able to be horizontally as well. Because it is a variable engine. And I also have the problem showed in two of the images, the holes where I want them to be stuck, they are not when I rotate it towards “horizontal-mode”.
So I need some “system” for them to be locked in those holes they are in, but also locked in angle when being rotated.

I know this might be very hard to understand, not sure if even I would understand myself if I would read this, but hopefully someone gets my problem.

We could conclude it to that I want the “sticks” to work as they do in the video (if you are able to see it)

Thank you, It is important for me to get this solved quickly, so I would be very grateful if someone can assist me with this problem.

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I thought I’d take a stab at this and here’s what I came up with. All the animation comes from Gear01.

-All the rods are simply linked to Gear01, but have inherit rotate turned off so they stay at the same angle the whole time.
-Gear02 I changed it’s rotation controller to a Rotation List, added a second Euler controller to that list and made the new one the active controller. Now I can wire the Y rotation of Gear01 to the Z rotation of Gear02 and have it work in local space. It was rotating the opposite direction so making it the negative y value has it going the right direction.

If you want to give the rods some rotation, you could probably do the same as the gear and add a list controller.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

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angled_gears__max_2009.zip

Thank you for your response. I understand more or less, and it looks like you’ve understood my problem correctly, but do you think you could explain a bit more “detailed” or more “in-depth” if you get what I mean? (I am not the best english-speaker) Especially on step 2 I could need a more detailed explanation of what you’ve actually done.
For instance, how do you turn off inherit rotate?
Thanks once again.

For part 1, if you select a rod and go to the Hierarchy panel> Link Info button, in the Inherit rollout there are check boxes for position, rotation, and scale. I unchecked the rotation boxes for the rods.

For part 2, since Gear02 is at an angle, it needs to be rotated in local space and not world space. To be able to do that, it needs the Rotation List controller for it’s rotation (Motion panel> Parameters button> Assign Controller rollout). The help file shows how to assign different controllers. After you have the rotation list assigned, you can click on the Available parameter and assign it a Euler XYZ controller. Scroll down to the rotation list rollout in the same panel, select the new Euler XYZ layer, and click the Set Active button. You can give the new Euler XYZ a name in the same rollout so you know which is which, just type in the empty box above the Set Active button with the Euler XYZ layer selected. Now you can wire the rotation of Gear01 to the second Euler controller you added to Gear02. The help file shows how to use wire parameters too. If it’s rotating the wrong direction, you can add a negative sign (-) in front of the expression in the dialog box, hit update and it will reverse the direction.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

Is there a reason you can’t use either look-at contraints or IK?

Christopher L. Bruce - Senior Animation - Cryptic Studios
3DSMax 2009 (SP1) 32-bit/64-bit - Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Intel Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @2.83GHz - 8.00GB RAM - GeForce 9800 GT (1GB)

While working with this solution of yours I noticed that your example file does not work horizontally, only in the angle it currently is. (Gear 2)
I need the gear 2 part to be able to be rotated, but the gear 1 part with “sticks” still need to follow the angle of gear 2.
Guess I was unclear about how it should’ve worked, but it also needs to be possible to rotate gear 2 to a certain degree, like you can see in the attached image to this post.

Thanks.

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I refined the rig I had and here are the changes I made:

-I created two controls for the angle of the machine and orientation of everything. Gear01 still controls the rotation of Gear02.
-I created a dummy for each of the rods and used a lookat constraint for each.
-Gear01 needed a rotation list controller with 2 rotation tracks so it can rotate in local space on the second track. It’s also linked to Gear Orientation.
-Gear02 has a rotation list controller with 3 tracks so Gear Angle can change it’s angle in local space, and Gear01 can control it’s local Y rotation. It’s also linked to Gear Orientation.

You can position and orient the whole machine with Gear Orientation and everything works in local space. If you open the file and hit play, you can see everything working.

This might not be the best rig, maybe MLB can come up with something simpler.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

	Attachment
angled_gears_2__max_2009_1.zip

I’ll have a try at your option first, but contacted MLB as well. I’ll keep in touch with this thread on how it goes. Thank you so much for such fast and great responses. Very appreciated

I did a rig with some script controllers.

You can tilt intersectionGrid, rotation is with rotationPoint

If you clone a rayPoint together with its intersectionPoint you can add more ‘cylinders’.

Is this useful?

3D Studio DOS to 3ds Max 2010
Windows XP 64
NVidia Quadro FX 3700
Dual Quad Xeon, 6Gb Ram

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hydromotor_rig_01.zip

So I’m going to post this file here, for you guys to check out and hopefully help me.

@Krueger, when I tried with your solution the rods sort of twists in a weird angle, also on the refined file you posted. Don’t know if it is me doing something wrong though, but I can’t get it to work correctly.

@MLB, Thanks for your try to help, but that rig you gave me does not really help. Feel free to try it directly on my file instead though.

And thank you once more so far.

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engineanimationforarea.zip

Are you still interested?

I think I know how to rig this.

3D Studio DOS to 3ds Max 2010
Windows XP 64
NVidia Quadro FX 3700
Dual Quad Xeon, 6Gb Ram