A combination project
This was a big project from a couple years ago. I wanted to do a project that combined a few of my different skills. I decided to design, 3d model, and create a video of a manual-powered grinding wheel, create custom music for the video, and then actually build the physical device.
To keep the posts for this project down to a moderately readable length, I decided to break it into three parts. This first part will be the design, 3d modeling, and video portion of the project.
Let's start from the beginning. What the heck am I even making?! For me, this was going to be a grinder for sharpening lathe tools. You pump the pedal on the bottom with your foot, which is attached to an arm, which is attached to a sort of cam, which turns a shaft with a pulley, which connects to the belt-driven grinder on the top.
Full disclosure, this design didn't quite work out, but I'll get to more of that later. The frame structure for this might look pretty simple, but all four legs lean in toward the top in both directions, so there were lots of angles to sort out and cut. I didn't want to permanently trap the belt into the structure, so the top board is removable and the undercarriage is open for belt removal (the shaft has to be slid out, but at least it's possible!).
Now that I had this designed and 3d modeled, I wanted to do a cool video with it. Of course, I wanted to show the basic operation of the pedal, shafts, pulleys, and grinder wheel. Since I'm entirely inexperienced at 3d rigging, that turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. Personally, I think mechanical rigging workflows could be improved both in Blender and in Unreal Engine.
Anyway, I finally got an acceptable animation of the basic operation worked out, but that didn't seem adequate. There were so many unseen pieces in the model, so I thought it might be fun to create an animated exploded view of the model.
You might be wondering how something like that is done. It's kind of hard to show without a lengthy explanation, but here's a silent and very brief overview of what a piece of it looks like in Unreal Engine, the tool I used to create and render the animation.
It was as tedious and laborious as it might seem, but I was able to achieve the effect I was after, and it was an educational experience as well. Next week I'll post about making the music, and I'll include the finished video!
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