Updated animation

Richard and I have been working on the animation this week to overcome some of the problematic areas that arose during the first stage of creating the animation. We have slowed the fly wheel down so that it starts gradually rather than immediately and it also runs a lot slower throughout the entire animation. The arm at the back of the model which collided with other sections now works correctly. We amended this by simply dragging the key frames forward slightly so that the arm moved in synchronisation with the object that surrounds it. Although it is difficult to see, there is also another small animated object between the fly wheel and the back arm which has been included.
We have now completed the animation of the model itself, which lasts for approximately 700 frames. Previews of the first 250 frames are shown below:





The gauge which Tom has been working on also needed to be animated. So, as I have had a lot of practice with animation now, I decided to continue with animating the gauge.
To do this, I created a new gauge arm which resembled the red one that Tom created, and coloured the new one in black. This could then be animated.
I then turned the key frame record on, and started to move the arm around accordingly. I encountered many problems, worst of which was the fact the the gauge was joined to the main model, and when I ungrouped it, the previous animation became corrupt. So, I had to animate the arm on the gauge at an angle, which meant that when I moved the arm to be animated, I had to correct it on all axis. This took a lot longer than I intended. I moved the arm up to around the 15lbs mark, and then moved it up and down a few times so that it gave the impression that it was juddering. I then gradually increased the arm, and half way made the increment even faster as the wheel then slowly comes into motion. A preview of this can seen below: