A water wheel with contrained buckets

[Anonymous]

Hey all,

I am creating an old style water wheel with a number of buckets around it.  When the wheel spins the buckets will scoop up particles then at the top they get hooked on a metal rod and the water tips out.

I have the wheel setup as a Kinetic object in MassFX (as it's animated) the buckets as Dynamic objects with a mesh type of concave.  The buckets are supported by a cross beam which my plan was for that to be the pivot point.

I have a rigid contraint on them, but when the wheel turns the buckets do in fact turn with the wheel but are fixed in position.  I need them to basically fall to the correct orientation based on how the wheel is spinning and of course interact at the top to tip the particles out.

Am I missing something with this type of constraint?

Thanks

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thanks for posting your question! oooh that sounds like a lot of moving parts, I'm sure there is a way to get that effect to work with a physics simulation and rigging! 

But first I just wanted to ask, do you need the wheel to be rigged and simulated? I found that linking my "bucket" and then turned off the rotation in the hierarchy box in my command panel, it got the, albeit basic, movement that is desired.

Okay so that's maybe an overly basic way of doing things, and I can dig in a little more with the physics simulation stuff when I get into the office tomorrow.

Hope this helps! 

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

I need the buckets to interact with other objects, i.e. collecting the particles and then getting tipped when they rotate to the top to empty the particles.

I have tried to set up some constraints in max.. the wheel being the main, the bucket being the child.  But I just can't seem to get the buckets to react as they should when they would be hanging off a turning wheel.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

ok nutted it out.  

Using MassFX..

Selected the main wheel, then one of the buckets and assigned a Rigid Constraint.  Set the Twist to 'Free'.  Rotated it 90 degrees.  Set the constraint point to be on the child.  Moved it to the point of where the pivot point of the buckets are, made sure the two child settings were aligned under the settings for the constraint..  his sim and boom, wheel turns and all the buckets (when the process is done) all move nicely.

[hagen.deloss]

@Anonymous,

That's great, I'm super happy you figured it out! I was just running a simulation with a makeshift waterwheel I modeled myself! Your solution sounds pretty cool... if the project isn't proprietary, would you be interested in showing off the result?

[Anonymous]

I'll do a viewport render with where it is at currently soon.  

[Anonymous]

Have to work on the mass and the tipper mechanism and the like but you get the idea here.

wow.. sorry.. didn't look at the file size 😕  

[hagen.deloss]

@Anonymous

this is awesome! It's really fun to see how much nuance a physics simulation can add to an animation, thanks for sharing it 😄