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Reaver2k
01-20-2008, 07:57 PM
Ok, basicly I am having problems creating a conveyor belt. The obvious idea would be to look through some tank tread tutorials. But here comes the problem. The conveyer belt needs to be one long loop.

What I have been trying is creating a plane (poly) with plenty of segments, and creating a curve (tried both closed and open). Then attaching the plane to a motion path on the curve. This makes the plane revolve around it, but I want it to curve around it. So I've been playing with flow paths. This is really close but has a few problems. Once the plane as revolved around the curve once, instead of looping back around at the start, it carries on going until the END of the plane has gone through the end point, then starts again. Also there are a few jiggerdy jaggerdy bumps as it is going round. It looks asif the lattice is automatically skewed slightly at one point, I've tried several times and the same happens each time. Its like it twists 180 degrees at a single point.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I would use a animated texture but I'm planning on using the belt for dynamics so really need it to move.

I think the problem is that its a single plane (which is also very difficult to scale to exactly twice the curve, since the curve always goes down about to make a loop)

Picture is supplied below with problems I'm having marked.
Reaver2k
01-21-2008, 03:24 PM
Ok I figured out simply to create a tube/cylinder, set it so its rotating 360 degrees over 1000 frames then lattice it and scale it down. Not ideal because its still slightly curved but better than before. I am now having another problem! When I convert the poly into a rigid body, it scales really oddly outside of the lattice. I think this is something todo with the base of the lattice because its around that sort of area and when its moved so does the problem.

Another problem I am having despite of this (I can probably work a way out of working around the previous problem) is that when I set an object to be an active body. It interpenetrates! I've made sure its set to forces from CVs and Vertexes, turned up the devisions and just about everything I can think of! Still no luck! It falls onto the cylinder, and kind of bounces as its going straight through it.

Anyone have any idea whats going on with these dynamics?! Need this done by the end of the week and I'm running out of time!

Cheers for any suggestions!
shinyprem
01-21-2008, 03:38 PM
Hi...!
I have rigged a conveyor... Model it as a closed loop mesh and to animate it u can key the U or V direction of the texture of the conveyor and cycle the keys in the graph editor.

Rgds,
Reaver2k
01-21-2008, 10:11 PM
Cheers for replying,
Are you talking about animating the texture? If so the only problem with that is that I was hoping to use it for dynamic rigid and active bodies so this wouldn't quite let me do that.
If I am getting the wrong end of the stick, could you please explain your suggestion in a little more depth? I'm quite new to this whole rigging thing as you can probably tell and to be honest wouldn't know where to start with creating a closed loop mesh or animating the U and V values! Although I'm guessing just keying the values in the channel box?

Thanks again.
Reaver2k
01-23-2008, 10:32 AM
No one no ideas why the rigid bodies might not be working? Running out of time on this one!
Reaver2k
01-23-2008, 10:47 AM
Right I think i've worked out whats going wrong but I've no idea how to fix it! I think the rigid body is being applied to the pre-deformed polygon. Without deleteing history (because it would mean I cant have it rotating the way I need it to be a conveyor belt) is there any way to apply a passive body to a deformed polygon?
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