Week 9 Part 3-Animating the Pressure Gauge

The modelling of this part of the machine is now complete and so I decided to go on and add animation to the necessary areas before the file is merged with the 3Ds max files other group members have been working on.

Animating the needle on the gauge involved making it flicker slightly throughout the timeline. The movement involved was rotation, with all the movement coming from the spindle where the needle joined the face of the dial. To begin I selected the pivot button in the hierarchy rollout so I could assure the point of rotation was in the correct place. This was already positioned in the centre of the circular area where the needle was joined to the spindle and therefore was correctly positioned for animation to begin.

Following this I checked that the timeline was set correctly. During this weeks group meeting the frame rate was discussed and it was decided to work in PAL which would run at 25 frames per second. Also, I extended the length of the timeline from 60 to 100 frames as I felt this would give me a reasonable amount of time to work with and allow enough variation to the needles movement. I felt this was important as I did not want the needle only moving through a couple of keyframes before repeating itself as obvious repetition would not add realism to the scene.

Next I created the animation along the timeline. For this I turned on auto key and made alterations to the needle at different points along the timeline. At uneven intervals I used the rotate tool to change the direction in which it pointed. I added key frames at uneven intervals as the move of the needle was not regular and therefore would make this part of the animation more realistic. Also, I rotated the needle to different angles when adding key frames to add realism further.

When I felt I had set enough key frames along the timeline I watched the animation. I was slightly disappointed with this as I felt the swing I had applied to the needle was too large. To resolve this I turned on auto key again and made changes to the position of the needle where I felt it was necessary with the rotate tool. This took quite some time as I ended up making changes several times to some key frames, but eventually I perfected the animation.

Now that I was happy with the basic animation I went to the curve editor and from this opened the “parameter curve out of range type” window. Here I changed the curve type from constant to loop so that what I had animated so far would be repeated throughout when merged with other group member’s animation in other files. I selected loop over other curve types as I felt this would work best for several reasons; firstly the needle would remain in the same area throughout the animation unlike what I expected linear or relative repeat to do, secondly so that there would be a smooth transition from the last key frame to the first when it repeats unlike the cycle type and finally as I thought the viewer could realise if the animation played forwards and then backwards.

I am pleased with how the animation has gone. This file is now ready to be merged with the other 3Ds max files which contain machine components.