Hi,
I'm trying to animate a train car to follow a path. I've created the actors; train car, leading axle and trailing axle. I've attached the train car to the leading axle and the trailing axle to the train car. I've then defined the leading axle to follow a path and given a specified time so I can see it in motion. Issue here is that when I run the script, on curve path, the trailing axle will be thrown out of the path.
How do I move the trailing axle so that it will follow behind the leading axle following the same path and thus rotate the train car accordingly (similar as how a train car moves in reality)?
Thanks in advance,
Lina
I think your best bet would be to attach all three actors to the path using path distance method so all are moving along path at same speed the the axle actors will align to the rail. I set your Actors to all be traveling at 18*tSeconds or 18 Meters per second which is 64.8K per hour you can adjust this to be the speed you need.
We plan to make it easier to animate trains in the future.
Cheers,
Jerry
Thanks Jerry,
I've noticed when I run the script that the axles run out of the original 1600mm position when going around curves. I've managed to settle that by playing around with the timing of the two axle.
Then I've noticed that the horizontal line of the train car is not in line with the mid-of axles when going around the curves.
Any suggestion as to how to get the train car to move and rotate based on the 2 mid-of axle position? In other words, the train car is moved and/or rotated based on the position of the 2 axles mid point.
Thanks,
I would love to see a movie of what you have made, as what you are doing is pretty complex animation for microStation.There really is no "constrain" or physics options in this here CAD-software is there?
Sorry I cannot help, but I wish you GL :)
System: Win7 64bit 16GB Ram - microStation V8i SS3 08.11.09.578. + PoinTools CONNECT. - Intel i7-4800MQ CPU@2.70GHz, 4 core / 8 Logic proc.
Hi Lina,
You need Inverse Kinematics (IK) and constraints which the current Animator does not have. IK is very high on our to do list for future version. If I can think of a better cheat I will let you know.