Animation: conveyor belt

#1

Hi Guys!

I turn to you for help in a desperate cry for help…

I have a box (actually several in a neverending stream), that is moving along a conveyor belt. At frame X the box slides over to another Conveyor belt and then to another and so forth. How do I solve this?

And to make it all a little bit worse, there is 2 identical systems so that every other box goes to system 1 and the next to system 2.

I´m getting kind of desperate since I have a deadline next week… weeee

If anyone can help me with this, I´m calling my mother tomorrow and tell her that the is still some good left in this world!

Take care all!

#2

If you could post some screenshot, it would help a lot. As I am not too sure how it is actually moving. Just on top of my head, I would use reactor to set up a simulation. It really depends on how realistic you want it to look. We did somthing like that long ago in our studio, nothing too much fun, but it work.

#3

It´s like a luggage treadmill in an airport…
Some bags are going to gate 1 and others to gate 2. Getting there they are moved from one treadmill over to another.

The scene is extremely primitive and simple but the animation part is driving me crazy!

  1. Every other is divided inte either the red or the blue belt
  2. Moved over to perpendicular belt.
  3. Every other is pushed to the circular belt which is then moved along and rejoined with prev belt

This is just 1 out of 6 scenarios

#4

Massemannen,

you can use pathconstraints.
Each box can be constraint to several paths and the belonging to each path (weight) can be animated.
Each Path represents a part of your conveyor belt.

Hope this helps.

Georg

#5

Hi Georg!

Tnx for the tips… I´ve tried that but I cannot figure out the Weight thingy. To me it´s unlogical. If I want several paths to animate along it would make much more sence to add a start and stop value for everey path rather than a Weight/Blend value that mix it all together :-S

#6

Hm.
If you don’t want to blend between different path you can layout the different routes as a single path each. If you constrain a dummy to the path you can duplicate it and link any geometry to it …

Even in this sezenario you can constrain a single dummy to all possible paths and set in the first frame which path to follow by setting all other paths to 0-weight.

If you want to switch between paths you have to set the unused path to 0-weight and the active one to 100.

With wire-parameters/parameter collector and/or maxscript you could also build an “conveyor belt abstraction layer”.

In any case “path constraint” is just a tool to make objects follow a path - the logic is generated by you. I must admit that I discovered the beauty of “path constraint” recently now I am a huge fan of it.

Georg

#7

Just a thought but have you tried using reactor? Seems like an easier solution than trying to get an object to change path constraints:shrug:.

What Georg is saying makes sense.

Edit:

Might also just be easier to actually keyframe it during it entire course instead of using any constraints. How many “bags” do you have to animate? If it is just a couple, just animate them by hand.

#8

I would actually create just a few of the boxes and save the animation and load it to different object and offset the animation.

#9

Hi folks and tnx for your support!!

It´s an endless stream of “boxes”. My first thought was particles but… needed more control over the individual objects.

U have a point there Illusion-Shadow…
Animate one box with path constrain to a certain point, then turn that animation into keyframes so that I can copy and offset it to another and the another, offset and so on. hrmm, maybe

How can I turn an Path animation inte keyfames?

And guys?! I REALLY appreciate your help!!!

#10

To turn a path constrained animation into keyframes:

  • Once the object is path constrained select it and go to the motion tab of the command panel.
  • Then Press ‘trajectory’
  • Setup the Frame range of animation that you wish to convert. (All animation outside of this range will be lost.) The number of samples is basically how many keyframes you need there to be, higher smaple value = more keyframes = closer to the motion of the original path constraint)
  • Press collapse

Though personally I would just setup the 4 different paths a box could go along and then path constrain boxes on each one. Set them to loop and space them out evenly so they don’t hit eachother when the paths join together and you’re done unless I’m missing something. I use this for cars merging on highways all the time.

#11

Just a thought but have you tried using reactor? Seems like an easier solution than trying to get an object to change path constraints:shrug:.

As I am not very familiar with reactor: How would you do this?
Not a step by step tutorial - but a quick overview - if you have the time?

I am investigating the combination of pathconstraints and partivle flow right now, but there are problems keeping the materials between different paths.

Georg

#12

actually after reading the mention about reactor, I did a quick test yesterday to see if it would work, and with a bit of tweaking it did seem to work surprisngly well. Granted, I just wanted to see if a conveyor belt could move a box from one to another, so my tests were not as complex as yours would have to be.

Basically for the conveyer I used a box with a path deform modifier to get the actual polygons moving around like a actual conveyor would (path deform modifier pointed to an ellipse/editable spline for the path) Then I added the conveyor to a deformable mesh collection (reactor>create object>deformable mesh collection) and added the box to a rigid body collection. I brought the friction properties fo both to 1 to really make them stick, and at that point it was just a matter of tweaking mass/gravity values (I wasn’t working in a ‘to scale’ environment)

If you still aren’t sure where to start I could probably setup another test today and post it. (max8)

#13

SnipeyX: if you could post your existing test - would be just fine.

Using Reactor I see the problem that you need a huge Box where alle the boxes are comming out? You need to build a complete infrastructure - maybe even airplanes landing and people unload them driving to trucks …

I have solved my material problem in pflow - but I am not sure if this is capable of :

  1. Every other is pushed to the circular belt which is then moved along and rejoined with prev belt

Georg

#14

i went ahead and did a new test this morning for fun, just have 3 boxes going around on conveyor belts setup in a circle, testing the transition from one to another, and then i animated a box to swing out and knock the first and third box off the belt, would just need to add more belts where they fall off to keep them going along a new path & etc…

#15

No, not necessarily, You may have to build a feeder, that shouldn’t be difficult, a ramp that goes off into oblivion, (this could be hidden with a piece of geometry the same color as your background) keyframe the last box to push the rest…

Nice work James :thumbsup:

#16

Thank you James!
Looks great.
I guess I depends on wheater you want to simmulate or visualize this procedure.
For a more complex and extensive there seems to be a lot of setup and simulation time.

Georg

#17

OMG, you guys are really helping out!

I´m very thankful for all of your tips…

#18

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