Written by Adrian Thompson |
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IntroductionWhile working on a small project a little while ago i had to make a tank tread and animate it, I searched round for a while to find a tutorial to help me but didn't have much luck so i had to come up with this. i showed the finished ani to a freind of mine who asked if i'd write him a tutorial on how i built and animated it so here it is. Be warned this is my first so it might be a little rough, anyway i hope you find it usefull |
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I first made one tread 200 mm across centered on 0,0 on the z and x axis and flat on the y axis if you haven't or can't be bothered to make one yourself then just use this one tread.lwo |
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then
on the next layer I made the spline out of 2 discs do define the shape
of the belt with an extra point on the bottom middle cord then used "rest
on ground" to make sure the bottom chord was flat on the y axis and centered
on the x axis |
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The
extra point on the bottom cord should be at 0,0, if not just move it there,
that point should also be the start of the spline. If not just kill it
and pick the points again (anticlockwise) starting with the point at 0,0
and make a closed spline |
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| Next I used railclone(here's the cool bit) Some background info to make the next step make sense. Making a perfect morph relies on the morph object having the same amount of points and them being in the same order now if you railclone an object it creates points in a sequence, and if you undo that move the object and run it again the points are still created in the same order even if the objects not in the same place providing a perfect morph, we're gonna use this to our advantage :-) |
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Now
back too the railclone now copy your original tread to an empty layer
(I used number 5) with your tread in the foreground and your spline in
the background run the railclone tool set it to uniform lengths if it
isn't already on and activate oriented how many depends on the length
of your spline, just up the number until the treads are almost touching |
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You
should end up with something that looks like this, if not go back and
check your steps :-) |
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Zoom
in in two treads on the bottom chord of your belt and measure there exact
centers, I easiest way I've found od doing this is by selecting two similar
points on adjacent treads then getting the "info" on there positions write
this value down, your gonna need it :-) |
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in
my case the values I needed were x = 63.0052mm and x = -190.8326mm
the difference between them = 253.8378mm |
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Copy
your original tread to another free layer (I went for number 6) making
sure you have both tread(layer 6) and spline layers turned on lasso select
all the points that make up the tread (because you have the spline layer
on you should have got its start point too ) now activate the "move" tool
(t) in the X value type in the distance you measured before (the center
to center distance of the treads) and hit apply |
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so
for me it would be -253.8378mm its negative because that's the
direction I want the tread to move in when I apply the morph :-) |
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Now
your tread and spline start point should have moved exactly one step along
your belt now with the tread(layer6) in the foreground and the spline
in the background hit railclone again lightwave being the top toy that
it is should still have the values set in which you used before so just
hit apply (if not open layer 5 and start counting :-)) |
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| You should now have another belt which although looks similar to the first you made has one crucial difference and that's the point order, which has now shifted over by one tread this will be our morph target Now on older versions of lightwave you would use these two object to make your track move by morphing one to the other but with lightwave 6.5 we have shinny new toys one of which are the fantastic "morph maps". Morph maps allow you to save all the morph information in one layer then when this layer is loaded into layout the morph amount is easily controlled using a slider or an envelope. If your confused don't worry I'll say more on this later :-)
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| OK now make the layer with the first tread the foreground layer and set the layer with the second tread as the background layer (see image). Now hit "bkg to morph" its found under maps/bkg to morph A dialog box should now open asking you what you want to call the morph map, I went for "roll" now if you click on the M in the bottom right of the screen it should say "roll", congratulations you've just made a morph map. It may not look like much happened but trust me your gonna be impressed (well maybe a little:-)) |
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| Now while still on layer 5 (the first tread and also the one with the morph map) click copy ("c"), then open a new object and hit paste ("v") You should now have and object with one layer with one tread on it, if you click on M in the lower right corner it should have the word "base" written next to it. Click on that and you should see the word "roll" which shows that your map has been copied too. OK save this puppy, I called mine "tank" (hey never know I may build the rest) |
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before
we go to layout we should give this layer a name to make it easy to recognize
in layout, yea I know its the only thing there so its not gonna be to
hard to spot but its a good habit to get into |
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open
up the "layer browser" its under Modeler/layer browser or just
hit "Y" the layer browesr will then show you a lost of the objects
you have open, in my case tank and tread, click on the little arrow next
to tanks as its this objects layer name(s) we want to change, the list
should expand and have "unnamed" listed. Double click on the
word and another dialog should open allowing you to rename it, I called
mine "belt" |
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Your
layer window should look something like this now hit save all objects
before something bad happens :-) |
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| That's pretty much all we need in Modeler for now. It time to animate this puppy so its time to go and play in layout |
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