I am starting this thread so this could be a place to look for animation ideas, places to get parts, you animation project progress, tips, tricks, anything and everything to do with animation in Z.
One more reason to start this thread is I am current working on making a animated train station and wanted to post details on how I am making it and wanted some ideas too. I will have to post it tonight, because it is going to be a long post. Kim
Kim, all your animation looks awesome. I am more of a supporter then actirve member. I am sure Tim will add more to this tread.
i told my wife i had an SD70 and a GP9 on order. she got pretty animated. does that count? i'm looking forward to more of your stuff. it is safer and better. dave f.
Ha Ha ! A station scene sounds cool. I can imagine baggage carts going to and from the station. And possibly use one of those old vibrating football games to make the passengers move ; )
David, it only counts if you are moving fast enough in the opposite direction from your wife as she holds a baseball bat over her head :O) Loren
One of the reasons most of my projects are half done is I start off with something in mind then it keeps evolving and evolving till I put it off in the background to revisit it later when I get interested in it again. This is one of them. I made a train station for a small spinning layout I have been building for years. It is a fictitious station made with Ideas from I decided to animate something in it so decided to have people running inside the station. I built a pulley/belt driven mechanism to spin in a oval. It will look silly to see people going in circles in the train station so divided the station into many rooms and if you see through the window you can only see one person moving at a time and if I make the station busy with more static people in the front it will not look obvious. Also I plan to put one light in each room at different intensity to blur the effect of people going in circles.
[FONT="]It is kind of silly to be able to post only 4 pictures at a time I dont know what that acheives... Anyway here are the prototypes That was all I was planning on doing as of yesterday. Now I decided to try one more step of opening doors and people coming from the side and waving, 2 doors and 3 people. So I programmed a chip to control 5 servo motors to do this, that was the easy part now to make the linkages and mechanisms to make it work. Will post details as I build them Kim [/FONT]
Too much time on that man's hand's!!:teeth: Great job though! What is that type of wire called that actually moves? I've seen it in Model Railroader and in the Walther's catalog.
Thanks David, that's the other name I was thinking of. I believe it's just another name for the same stuff. Randy
Actually, I think there may be two types. One changes shape (a bent wire straightens, or a straight wire bends, depending on how the memory was set) and the other changes length. I need to do a bit more checking to be sure...
Hi Kim, Always new crazy and surprising stuff on your workbench, and you just told about the biggest challenge, I mean to turn the round movement into a random. I will look forward to your progress with pleasure.
Here is more info on the two types of NITINOL wire http://www.smallparts.com/products/descriptions/naw.cfm http://www.smallparts.com/products/descriptions/nw.cfm I got some of this wire and I thought of using it but cannot use it for this application because it is difficult to control exact positions and speeds, it varies with ambient temperature. The cheapest place I got them was http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Stiquito/nitinol.htm Kim
Gathered all the parts that I thought will be needed Square hollow stock as guides and square rods for motion + the small servos I could find. Soldered the slide mechanism Need to figure out a way to fit all these underneath Kim
Had some good progress today, completed the mounting and links for animation. This would have been the hardest part of this project. First mounted the servos in a delrin bracket Quick fit check Soldered some brass brackets Now to add the links and calibrate for smooth operation
Here you can see the sildes and links to the servo Here the links brought up for the actual movement in the station Kim