Rigged Pistons in Blender

After following a fantastic tutorial by Jonathan Williamson (no relation) I put together this rough animation of a working piston. All of the modeling, animation, and rendering was done using just Blender.

The end of the piston is parented to an empty, and the empty is parented to the through rod which is connected to the flywheel. The in-out movements of the piston and cylinder are calculated automatically. The only thing animated in the video is the flywheel’s turning along it’s y-axis. I’ve been wanting to play with this for a long time. Next up, a steam engine!

I’ve another video rendering out right now. It’s taking awhile, it’s HD and render time is half an hour or so per frame. Can you say ‘not optimized’? Oh well.

–Lace

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Benjamin Bailey

in November 25th, 2009 @ 07:08

Very nice! (I know this is a rigging example, but you could make the wheel model better – higher-poly around the circumference and a better spoke design.) Anyhow, thanks! Is this based off of Jonathan Williamson's tutorial?
Reply

Benjamin Bailey

in November 25th, 2009 @ 14:08

Very nice! (I know this is a rigging example, but you could make the wheel model better – higher-poly around the circumference and a better spoke design.) Anyhow, thanks! Is this based off of Jonathan Williamson’s tutorial?
Reply

Zachary L. Williamson

in November 25th, 2009 @ 09:40

Thanks! Yea, the wheel was a quick mock up, I screwed up while modeling it and then had to save and quit, and found myself unable to quickly undo the damage when I was ready to model. Needless to say, I have a much nicer looking wheel modeled for next time, modeled off of a small scale steam engine.

This is off of Jonathan's tut. They are always so informative. I'm working on some more rigging now, I'll be posting the progress to the BlenderArtists forums for some help, I'm stuck with a tiny detail.
Reply

Benjamin Bailey

in November 25th, 2009 @ 10:08

Very nice! (I know this is a rigging example, but you could make the wheel model better – higher-poly around the circumference and a better spoke design.) Anyhow, thanks! Is this based off of Jonathan Williamson's tutorial?
Reply

Zachary L. Williamson

in November 25th, 2009 @ 16:40

Thanks! Yea, the wheel was a quick mock up, I screwed up while modeling it and then had to save and quit, and found myself unable to quickly undo the damage when I was ready to model. Needless to say, I have a much nicer looking wheel modeled for next time, modeled off of a small scale steam engine.

This is off of Jonathan’s tut. They are always so informative. I’m working on some more rigging now, I’ll be posting the progress to the BlenderArtists forums for some help, I’m stuck with a tiny detail.
Reply

Zachary L. Williamson

in November 25th, 2009 @ 12:40

Thanks! Yea, the wheel was a quick mock up, I screwed up while modeling it and then had to save and quit, and found myself unable to quickly undo the damage when I was ready to model. Needless to say, I have a much nicer looking wheel modeled for next time, modeled off of a small scale steam engine.

This is off of Jonathan's tut. They are always so informative. I'm working on some more rigging now, I'll be posting the progress to the BlenderArtists forums for some help, I'm stuck with a tiny detail.

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