Animate the Rotor Blade

OK

I am still playing with animation, thats realy fun, -but are ther anyone that can give me a tips howe to get the illusion of the rotor blade to rotate ?

mvh

/olle

HELICOPT.skp

Olle,

what you've done is deceptively simple, all that changes is the view but it gives the appearance of the chopper moving.

To make the blades move you need to have layers turning on and off as the pages change. The sequence should be: roto-1/roto-2/roto-3 and then repeat (see attached; I've just done the first 3 pages). To get a good effect you need more pages and for them to change faster.

HELICOPT1.skp

You're really into this movie business aren't you Olle? We'll have to start calling you Ingmar. ;O)

Hej Alan

No I´m to old for that, just have to continue as an architect, but one of the main aspects inside the design work are to communicat with the clients and theres always interesting to find new ways. if not for the clients, than just for my self. And a simple type of animation as possible in SketchUp could be the thing that lift up your day. Attached are a small hous in Malmö, - in the backyard the wind is blowing in the leafs. that movement I´ll tried with the rotorblades, but I´ll faild.

mvh

/olle

Thanks Gerry for your tips, I have tried that but it was a litle to much work, it must be simple easy ways to use as effect, - to get paid for the days work.

Bulow-H 5E.skp

Hej Olle,

I really like the flittering leaf effect in the hous in Malmö. I never considered doing something like this until I looked at your file. Now I am studying the layers and component settings for animation inspiration. Thank you for sharing. I like interesting things too. And it's a beautiful way to express your admiration for vastu design ;)

Maybe instead of actually attempting to get those blades spinning they could change from resting blades to a translucent disk representing spinning blades.

Perhaps the idea could be experimented with further by having two disk faces (groups) occupying the same space so that as the view changes you might see some flicker.

The curious thing about this model is that the only thing that is changing with the pages is the view; this gives the appearance of movement. So I'm puzzled by the fact that the shadow of the helicopter moves! Why is this, the shadow settings stay constant!

There actually used to be a bug which would have spun those blades under certain conditions....but I think it got fixed.

Hej Gerry

About the Helicoptershadow, its just the use of the tips from Alan Fraser some days ago, change the axis for the component to have it´s centre some distance away from the copter set the componet to always face the camera, uncheck Shadows face sun.

With different pages change the view, -the copter seems to be flying awy, but it´s still on the ground ! Rotate the copter component around the axis center and its up in the air.

After a 360 the copter is back on ground agian, but its tipping to the left side, - edit component, I made a new component inside the first one and rotated so the copter was standing at the right position on the ground. Than I tried to get a "flickering" in the rotor blades, just as with the blades at backyard Bülow Hübe in Malmö, but with the rotorblades I can´t get it to work in a nice way, - I´ll givt my trust that Alan will fix it.

mvh

/olle

Quoting olle bergman:

Hej Gerry

About the Helicoptershadow, its just the use of the tips from Alan Fraser some days ago, change the axis for the component to have it´s centre some distance away from the copter set the componet to always face the camera, uncheck Shadows face sun.

With different pages change the view, -the copter seems to be flying awy, but it´s still on the ground ! Rotate the copter component around the axis center and its up in the air.

After a 360 the copter is back on ground agian, but its tipping to the left side, - edit component, I made a new component inside the first one and rotated so the copter was standing at the right position on the ground. Than I tried to get a "flickering" in the rotor blades, just as with the blades at backyard Bülow Hübe in Malmö, but with the rotorblades I can´t get it to work in a nice way, - I´ll givt my trust that Alan will fix it.

mvh

/olle

Cool! I get it!......I'll have to check Alan's tips also.

Thanks for the 'demo'!

Here's a helicopter animation I did some time back (AirAmbulance.avi), and an aircraft with a spinning propeller (myplane.skp) -- the bug Alan mentioned is still with us :)

RickW

PS - had to zip the files to keep them under the 2MB limit...

AirAmbulance.zip

myplane.zip

Rick

Could you explain - the bug (that is, the prop spinning) only seems to happen when the camera moves - is that the case? And what is the property of the prop which makes it seem to spin (how do I replicate the effect)?

Thanks

Bill

I managed to replicate the behaviour by making a face-me component and placing that within another component that I tilted

Anssi

Have a look at this

helicopter.swf

Face-me components are intended to spin on their z-axis to make the x-z plane perpendicular to the camera. When a face-me component has its z-axis different from the global z-axis, it gets confused and "spins". This can be exploited for propellers, windmills, pinwheels, possibly vehicle tires - anything that spins in real life. But it only exhibits this spinning motion when the view camera is changing (changing between page views or orbiting the model, for example).