chains in 3ds

Technical 3D Animation and Competition
#1

Hi!

I’ve already created a link and i want to make a chain that goes a round two gears. Is their a way to do it easily.

We already tried drawing a spline path and using deform.

Thanks for the help

#2

I don’t know if there’s a really easy way, but the only way I know of is to create a spline path that goes around both gears and then have all the links follow each other like a train around the path.

#3

Path Deform modifier is definetely the best way to do that:

  1. first make an array of the links, so it looks like a straightened out chain
  2. join all of the links to create a signle mesh object
  3. make a spline going around the gears
  4. apply path deform modifier, and change the deform axios to match the spline
  5. Animate the path percent value to make the chain follow the spline
  • you might have to adjust the length of your chain to make it loop perfectly

Another way to do that might be Spline IK, but path deform should work fine.

#4

thanks

Yeah, i tried it again, because the first time we got distortion, but now it seems to be fine.

#5

Use a path deform as was already suggested. Then, under track view, apply a float expression modifier to the Percent Along Path attribute of the path deform. Assign a variable (call it gearrot) to the rotation of the gear on the correct axis. Make the controller equal to ((gearrot/360) * (diameter of gear * pi) * 100)/(length of path)…

What this is saying is:
Take the proportion of the angle spun to find out how far the gear has rotated (% * circumference), and then compare that to the length of the path.

Good Luck!