Free Repeating Gears Xpresson setup

[ecore]

Genius setup! :thumbsup: Thanks for the sharing.

[mustardseed]

Very cool, thanks!

It's gonna take me a while to put it back together again... :-P

[RandyLeeBlain]

Very cool, thanks!

It's gonna take me a while to put it back together again... :-P

Just re-unzip the folder. It happens to me all the time. I don't like reading the manual till I definitely have to..

Best Regards
Randy

[RandyLeeBlain]

Genius setup! :thumbsup: Thanks for the sharing.


I got a kick out of it. I had to devise a shot of gears to fit inside a block lettered logo and after twenty gears and one letter partially filled I decided there had to be a better way to do it. I set up about 700 gears n two days. Then hit animate instead of creating rotations for every gear in every chain. If you change the base shader to a regular metal shader, use ColorChanger and a gradient expressing various shades of metal or simply color them with bright happy colors, then they can all be different colors.

Best
Randy

[Mike Abbott]

Brilliant :) Clever and useful - and great fun too.

Thanks for a very generous share.

Mike

[Hilt]

r o c k s o l i d h u g e t h a n k y o u f o r t h e f i l e ! !

It's not even May yet but I guarantee this file is in me personal Top 3 "Most Valuable Learning Sources Of the Year 2008"

[RandyLeeBlain]

r o c k s o l i d h u g e t h a n k y o u f o r t h e f i l e ! !

It's not even May yet but I guarantee this file is in me personal Top 3 "Most Valuable Learning Sources Of the Year 2008"

Well thanky very much Hilt.. I learned alot making it. I would like to get it to turn right angles. Maybe I will play with it again this weekend as I put it down after I finished the shot.

Brilliant Clever and useful - and great fun too.

Thanks for a very generous share.

The C4D community has given me folder full of goodies I haven't even gotten to yet. I will see what else I have this weekend. I have some rigs around with full sets of sliders for controlling them.

Best Regards
Randy

[bunter]

thanks for sharing!

[Darter]

Thanks for putting the time and effort into this setup and for sharing the result. This is impressive work and a great resource for the C4D community. I took up your invitation to make some adjustments and have hopefully improved things.

I wasn’t able to replicate the problem with right angle gears but I think it's related to coordinate space. If you put the gears under a master null, they fly apart. The whole outfit can now be put under a null and keep working correctly when the null is moved and rotated.

Global values were changed to local values for the Next Gear Z Offset. The Spline node is set to Global Matrix mode but was feeding into the local Position of the cog axis null. This has been changed to global.

When changing the number of teeth, clashing occurred for odd values so I added a formula to compensate for this. A formula was also added to mesh the teeth when the Rotational Placement value is changed. For even results, Use Natural Distribution was enabled on the Spline Node.

These changes hopefully mean that the gears will mesh automatically in all situations.

Another possible change would be to have the gear Z offset User Data affect the current gear rather than the next one. This seems more intuitive to me.

As I had to recreate the setup in 9.6, I just did the basic cogs. If you're happy with the changes you may want to incorporate them into the full setup.

Remember to remove Result nodes when finished as they slow the expression.

Please let me know if any issues arise with the changes I’ve made.

EDIT: File updated.

[donelgreeko]

Hi! Very cool xpression. :applause: Perhaps you are interested in loading this setup up to xpresso24.com?

You can define your own license and add your banner for your page to your profile. Everytime someone opens the page with your xpression, a banner will be shown on the top instead of the google-ad.

Bye :)

[Hilt]

Out of curiosity, how long did it take to make this one?
I remember doing my own cog wheels back in 2005 -after three days i had something working but i simply lacked the knowledge on xpresso. My result was working but definitely below your work. *continues slicing the file*

[RandyLeeBlain]

Thanks for putting the time and effort into this setup and for sharing the result. This is impressive work and a great resource for the C4D community. I took up your invitation to make some adjustments and have hopefully improved things.

I wasn’t able to replicate the problem with right angle gears but I think it's related to coordinate space. If you put the gears under a master null, they fly apart. The whole outfit can now be put under a null and keep working correctly when the null is moved and rotated.

Global values were changed to local values for the Next Gear Z Offset. The Spline node is set to Global Matrix mode but was feeding into the local Position of the cog axis null. This has been changed to global.

When changing the number of teeth, clashing occurred for odd values so I added a formula to compensate for this. A formula was also added to mesh the teeth when the Rotational Placement value is changed. For even results, Use Natural Distribution was enabled on the Spline Node.

These changes hopefully mean that the gears will mesh automatically in all situations.

Another possible change would be to have the gear Z offset User Data affect the current gear rather than the next one. This seems more intuitive to me.

As I had to recreate the setup in 9.6, I just did the basic cogs. If you're happy with the changes you may want to incorporate them into the full setup.

Remember to remove Result nodes when finished as they slow the expression.

Please let me know if any issues arise with the changes I’ve made.

Thanks Darter. :buttrock: I knew you or one of the other Xpresso gurus could nail the adjustment. I wll play with it later after a street festival today.. I now have a good excuse to leave the terminal.

Best Regards
Randy

[RandyLeeBlain]

Out of curiosity, how long did it take to make this one?
I remember doing my own cog wheels back in 2005 -after three days i had something working but i simply lacked the knowledge on xpresso. My result was working but definitely below your work. *continues slicing the file*


I got a brainstorm and t took about 45 minutes when the idea struck me out of the blue. I would never have had the shot done n time if I dd not come up with this.. Great worksaver and Darters additions were the icing on the cake. I have some other gears i make can add to the setup and a Rube Goldberg gadget or two as well.

Best Regards
Randy

[RandyLeeBlain]

Hi! Very cool xpression. :applause: Perhaps you are interested in loading this setup up to xpresso24.com?

You can define your own license and add your banner for your page to your profile. Everytime someone opens the page with your xpression, a banner will be shown on the top instead of the google-ad.

Bye :)


Hi donelgreeko (ddn't know where to break the name up and capitalze..LOL). You may feel free to add the setup to your Xpresso archve. If you need my banner etc just tell me where I should contact you at..or you can email me. You have a great resource site BTW. I am hoping to get time soon to dg through the expressions I downloaded there..

edtt:To be fair Darter should be given props for tweaking the setup.

Best Regards
Randy

[jimzepellin]

Thanks for a realy nice expression.

[danb]

Nice!! This could not come at a better time.

Thank you very much!

[Darter]

Thanks Darter. :buttrock: I knew you or one of the other Xpresso gurus could nail the adjustment. I wll play with it later after a street festival today.. I now have a good excuse to leave the terminal.
Glad to have helped. You've had the ideas and put in the hard yards, I'm just riding coat tails.

Something that I missed was that the Next Gear Z Offset can plug straight into the Circle Z position. There's now no need to add the Coarse Cog Axis positon value. With the value added, everything works fine until gears are rotated at the axis null level.

The file on my previous post has been updated to include this change.

Please let me know if I've missed anything else.

[LemonNado]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing. Specially that intermittent 'sector gear' is great!
Rainer

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