Well, since I don't feel as though I'm doing a good enough job on the sets, I've decided to go back to rigging.

Here's the start of rigging the gears of the set. The belts are not rigged yet, they may need to be modified to get them to work correctly.

I don't think the belts need to travel around the pulleys (I can't tell), but you could make the horizontal ones move up and down in the center of the spans as if they were loose - that would also add to the illusion of linear movement.

The belts are textured, so they either need to be animated or the the texture needs to be animated.

Yes - it all looks very static. I'd also recommend some wheel wobble in at least 1/2 the wheels - perhaps some rattling ones as well.

Cheers

woha! cool to see the gear rig run:) I tried to model them so animating was possible, exept the joint (in the middle) going to the door back of the workshop. I dont think anyone will notice if that is missing, but I could go in and remodel that part if you want me to

Setup the bellows of the furnace to the drive gears.

As a manly man - I'd say that was pretty dang cool.

Nice ! I think animating the material would be an easy way for the belts to move to complete the scene

Wow! I can hear all the noises in this workshop already! Are they all done with constraints?

Ken, for the most part yes. One bone drives the whole thing.

John, that what I'm going to try, before having to remodel and rig the belts.

Even more alive. Great job

We have back door movement. I have the over head wheels with the big metal pot almost setup, but dynamic constraints don't seem to be working so I can't complete the setup.

That's cool.

Nice gears-sliding-door-open effect.

Here's an update. Coal car rigged, 3 poses animate the car on the tracks using 3 paths, animating 1 of the three poses will determine its destination. Overhead wheels rigged and pose sliders animate them along the tracks. Chains, metal bucket and hook are constrained to the overhead wheels and are setup with dynamics (hook is not finished yet). It's a little fast, just scrub through it. Sorry for the large file, I'll post a smaller version shortly.

Very, very cool.

Here's a smaller version with an update to the hook. It's getting there, still fine tuning the dynamics though.

Wow Mark! That looks great!

I see what you mean about the coal car, he's zippin right along

I can almost hear the 42nd Street theme song playing like in the old cartoons!


Lee

Nice work, Mark!