Animation help please!

Thanks for the references!!!! I’ll download one and try it out. Also thanks for the info on saving to mpeg.

OK,… I have a model of my 1978 GMC Jimmy. All the parts to the truck it’s self are in one group. The wheels are in two seperate groups, one group is the front wheels, the second is the rear wheels. I did this so i could rotate the wheels as the truck moves. My problems begins here. I have moved the truck in a 9 sec path, basically striaght, then a slow right turn, then it simulates going over some kind of bump, then stops. The truck moves along the path, the wheels dont. I was thinking that i would rotate them and move them to each time interval, ( every second ) so when i run the animation, it would look like the wheels are rotating as the truck moves. I have found it nearly impossible to do this acurately. I had also wanted to show the wheels turning as the truck manuvers through the turn. The way I was doing it was to move the truck to the 1 second mark, then rotating the wheel and moving it very slightly, doing this till it catches up with the truck. Keeping the wheel on the same line as the truck is very difficult. Now, i do have both front wheels in the same group so both will rotate the same, same for the rears..Is there a way to keep the wheels under the truck through the animation manuver and still have the freedom to rotate and turn them?? Also….how can i take several 10 second animations and make one long animation?? Anyone got the time to help i would appreciate it…. 3DC doesnt run well on my system so after 109 crashes on 7 hours of work on just making the truck, it is really nice that the animation elements dont seem to stress my system out and crash…actually haveing fun now!!!Please feel free to e-mail me with any help ….
Thanks to all….and sorry to Richard for being his worst nitemare!!!!

Hello blaydrnnnr,
andnbsp;If you right click on your wheels and go to properties, you can set the rotation of that object. I haven’t used it much but it may help.[maybe]

WOO-HOO!!! Thanks so much for the help….I havent had a chance to look at properties to see if rotation was available. Now that I’ve seen it, there’s alot there i am not familiar with. I will go and check it out in a few…right now, dealing with a bigger problem….am going to have to e-mail Richard on this one….thanks so much…..

yeah, there’s a limit of 1000 animation keys which equals 100 seconds with 10 keys per second. andnbsp;Ofcourse if you reduce the keys per second to 1, then you get 1000 seconds which is 16.67 minutes. andnbsp;5 keys per second would give you 3.33 minutes and so on.

It seems to me though by reducing the key per second you’re lowering the animation’s resolution, so going to 1 key per second is probably not the best idea. andnbsp;As a newbie myself, I don’t know if you can link one timeline to another different one, I doubt it. andnbsp;But perhaps you can link them outside 3dc in another program and have indefinately long animations… but I’m not sure on this point.

RawlinsCross

For the timeline issue, you can click on animation properties (very first icon of the animation toolbar) and bump up the animation keys to 500 for example. andnbsp;If the second box (keys per second) is 10, then you have a 50 second timeline. andnbsp;Is this any help? andnbsp;

RawlinsCross

Thanks for the reply!!!
Yeah, i figured if i lowered the number of keys per frame i would be getting a very choppy animation, I am hoping that i can link the animations together, but if not i know there are some AVI joiners out there….need to research a good andquot; freeandquot; one if there is one…….Right now though…i need to figure out how wheels are done….
Thanks!!!!

PS…I will post the truck later in models…need alot of help with textures and smoothing as well!!!!

Ahhh… ok.. My brain is fried from working on this thing…thanks. Makes sense….is there a limit to the amount of time you can make an animation?? I havent checked in 3DC yet. Was thinking of making a short movie ( AVI ) maybe two or three minutes long once i get this sorted out.

In response to your question about an avi andquot;joinerandquot;. I had asked the same question on another forum and someone gave me the addresses of two.
[img:2qu912on]http://www.aist.com/products/[/img:2qu912on]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.aist.com/products/">http://www.aist.com/products/</a>&lt;!– m –>

[img:2qu912on]http&#58;//www&#46;puremotion&#46;com/[/img:2qu912on]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.puremotion.com/">http://www.puremotion.com/</a>&lt;!– m –>

The puremotion editor is very good but it is only a 30 or 60 day trial, after that it puts a black box on your movie. The aist editor is very large and has no time limit on it’s usage. AVI movies are huge files and if you put together anything of any length you will have a hard time playing the movie on another computer. I have had success with putting everything together as an avi then saving it as an mpeg. I believe both these editors will allow you to do that.