• Maxon Cinema 4D

  Animating escalator steps

  Posted by Phillip Chester on July 7, 2017 at 3:36 pm

  I have an escalator model that will be used for 3D viz purposes and as such the steps need to be animated. Up to now, I have placed the steps into a cloner and set them up as you would expect so that they can be animated simply by changing the offset. The problem occurs when the steps reach the rotation point and don’t flip as they would in a real-life setup. This wouldn’t be an issue if you didn’t see them but the end visual will require internal shots, so we will see the stairs facing up instead of down. Can anyone help me with this as I can’t seem to find any help online with this problem.

  So in simple terms, I need the steps to face up (+y) on the outward journey but face down (-y) on the return. Any help would be appreciated. I am using R15 Studio if this helps.

  Thanks

  Phillip Chester replied 9 years ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  July 7, 2017 at 8:17 pm

  You should be able to do it with the spline effector, but I think it’s a matter of getting the correct axis position/rotation for the clone. Here’s a quick test I did where the axis is off, but moving in the right direction as it were….

  11505_escalatorwip.c4d.zip
• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  July 7, 2017 at 8:46 pm

  On second thought it looks to be a little more complicated than I thought. The axis of rotation essentially changes because the mechanism uses a second set of rails at the top and bottom. Here’s a good illustration that was probably done in C4D: https://vimeo.com/5196298 You might contact Joel and ask him how he did it.

  Meanwhile, here’s another quick attempt using a couple plane effectors at the top and bottom to get it closer to the mark:

  11507_escalatorwip0001.c4d.zip
• 

  Phillip Chester

  July 10, 2017 at 8:41 am

  Hi Adam,

  Thanks for looking into this for me, it has been a real challenge. For me, using multiple plain effector’s seems to be the way forward. I have set them up to rotate the steps 180 degrees at each end and it appears to be working. There are one or two small areas of inconsistency at the minute where the effectors meet one another but I am guessing that once I have made a few adjustments to the bounding boxes and the falloff radius then we should be good to go.

  

  I will keep the post updated in case anyone else has this issue in the future.

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