Digital Art Zone

3DAGE - 12 October 2012 02:13 PM

HI,.. I forgot to upload this earlier,. it’s a Zoom in of the screen-capture above.

you can set any axis by adjusting the others,. so in this case where the wing model is level to the floor, I need the X value to be 90 degrees so the constraint “gizmo”  flips up to the vertical.
I’ve then limited the amount that the “Flap” model can rotate.

hope that makes sense..

OK, thanks! I’m seeing how this works now. However it seems to be kind of wonky. If you move the hot point of the object, the constraint “gizmo” get all out of joint and becomes very hard to interpret. Additionally, rotating the constrained object by the Universal Manipulator in the Assemble room is counter intuitive (although the Rotate manipulator seems to function properly).

In the meantime, I think I’ve found a solution for Titanic401 using the Ball Joint constraint. I be posting it in a few minutes.

I think I got it. A real puzzler.

First, arrange the flaps around the cowl such that the xyz axes are oriented uniformly so that a rotation in one axis will move the flap in the correct direction. Move the Hot Points for all of the flaps to the leading edge of the flaps. This can be done all at once by selecting all of the flaps at the same time and while the Caps Lock key is active, move the Hot Points.

Use the Universal Manipulator to view the axes relative to the flap, rather than relative to the workspace. (See image)

Select each flap and apply a “Ball Joint” Constraint. In the case of this model the rotation of each flap occurs around the y axis, so the constraints for each axis was x-Locked, y-Limited, z-Locked. The “Rotation Order” needs to be changed to YZX before it will work correctly.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I have little knowledge about what “Rotation Order” does. I found out by trial and error that I needed this setting to make all of the flaps rotate the correct amount in the correct direction.)

Select one flap (I used the top one) and give it a unique name, such as “control flap”.

Select each of the other flaps in turn and apply a “Track” Modifier. In the modifier properties check “Track Rotation” and uncheck X, Y, and Z. In the “Towards” parameter choose the flap that you renamed “control flap”.

After the “Track” Modifier has been applied to all of the flaps, rotating the “control flap” around the Y axis should cause all of the other flaps to follow suit.

EDIT:  For some reason my animated GIF isn’t displaying properly when posted here, but you can still kind of see what’s happening. I’ll fix it if I can.

EDIT2: If you click on the animation it will open in another window where it will display properly.

Titanic401 - 11 October 2012 12:20 PM

Can someboby please explain to me the difference between the orientation and rotation in properties. They both seem to do the same thing making one of them completely useless.

I believe that all “orientation” does is allow you to re-orient/change the rotation of the hotpoint. Caps Lock allows you to move/translate the base location of the hotpoint, and orientation allows you to change its base rotation.