Chopper blades

[Remoth]

well, keyframing is the only real way to animate things besides simulations, but that's a waste of time in this case. if you use the Graph editor, it should only take you a few minutes to animate the blades.

Go to Window>Animation Editors>Graph Editor

This creates curves based on the keys you set, you can change these curves to create the animation you want. I'm sure there are lots of documents showing you how to use the graph editor, but this is your best way.

The only other way I can think of is a horrible waste of time. You use dynamics and constraints with a wind field to turn the blades, but as you probably know, the wind doesnt turn the blades, the blades create the wind. lol, just ignore this idea. hope this helps.

[NSF]

There's an amazing image of a couple of black hawks warming up about to take off. There's a really good thread here on CG talk somewhere. I will endeavour to find that for you. The reason that I suggest it is that the guy used a whole lot of dummies to control blade attack angle etc etc. Oh and there was something to do with the geometry of the blades bowing when the blades were still and then straightening out as they came up to speed.

It's a big thread to trawl through but it might have what you are looking for.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=407862

[XII]

wow, thanks guys this was really helpfull :)

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