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I'm new to Blender and trying to create an animation for an internal mechanical working demonstration. The reference video is this link (from 0:36 to 0:46)

The better quality version video can be found here

It is a controllable pitch propeller part made of a piston rod, 5 sliders and 5 crack pin rings. When the piston rod move along with (Y axis), the 5 sliders move up or down with the piston rod at the same time, the crack ping rings are spun by sliders. enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

enter image description here enter image description here I have to use the armatures to rig the model. However, I failed to completely rig it. I learned how to rig a piston animation from some YouTube videos. But all models or objects in those videos are not tilted. In this case, the 5 sliders and 5 rings are tilted. I don't know how to place the armature or bones properly.

I also tried the constraints or drivers to allow the piston location change drive the rings rotation, but I have no idea on how to animate the sliders. I don't want to make the animation frame by frame. I want to the entire animation to be done by one control bone of armatures since the final animation will be exported to a gltf file for web application (ThreeJS).

Can someone help me or teach me how to rig and animate this properly? Especially for tilted slider and ring parts.

Download blender file from Google Drive

How to rig the tilted objects?

How to use the armatures for animation?

Is it possible to use one controller bone to accomplish the animation?

Here's a detailed working animation

enter image description here enter image description here

I manually create one version to demo the animation. I also included one gltf export file here.

enter image description here

The uploaded gltf file can be viewed here or here.

The animation is created by using armature's Action Constraint. I have to move the location or rotation for every bones which rigging the sliders, rings, piston rods. enter image description here

There is one controller bone named Controller. With Action Constraint, Controller Y local location movement 'drives' Rings rotation, Sliders location (Y and Z local orientations) and piston rod Y location.

But it's not elegant and very difficult to maintain the animation.

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  • $\begingroup$ Why is the file so big (400 MB)? Are you aware that there are at least 5 duplicates of each part in the file? Besides that, I couldn't find the internal gears that do the rotation. Will you show the inner parts like in the video? If not, wouldn't it be enough to use a driver that rotates the rings when the piston moves? How does the "up-down" slider in screenshot 2 work? How does it rotates the ring and how is it moved? $\endgroup$
    – Blunder
    Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 18:25
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, I had removed the blender file linked data blocks. I had clean up and update the file on Google drive. drive.google.com/file/d/17BJVfmc-A54ndIP6e3NephjnvcUed3qz/… The ring has a pillar (showed in new image). The pillar pass through the hold of slider. $\endgroup$
    – Damon Song
    Commented Sep 12, 2022 at 3:13
  • $\begingroup$ is classical rigging a must or can it be drivers as well? And...unfortunately you didn't show us when and how they should move/rotate together. Do you have a better quality video where we can see the mechanism? $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Sep 12, 2022 at 9:00
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    $\begingroup$ The problem is solved by using bones Transformation Constraints. The pison rod bone is the target. The ring bone's rotation constraints by pison rod bone location movement (Y axis). And the slider bones are parent to pison rod bone on horizontal direction and slider bones add the location driver by using piston rod bone Y location ( abs(var) * 0.2 ) which solve the vertical direction movement of slider. As a result, the piston rod bones controls all location and rotation movements. Finally, add the new bone for entire model controller to rotate the axis. $\endgroup$
    – Damon Song
    Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 13:25
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    $\begingroup$ Please dont use "Solved" in your title, instead answer your question. Thank you keep this site organised. $\endgroup$
    – vklidu
    Commented Sep 13, 2022 at 13:52

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The problem is solved by using bones Transformation Constraints. The piston rod bone is the target. The ring bone's rotation constraints by piston rod bone location movement (Y axis). And the slider bones are parent to piston rod bone on horizontal direction and slider bones add the location driver by using piston rod bone Y location ( abs(var) * 0.2 ) which solved the vertical direction movement of slider. As a result, the piston rod bones controls all location and rotation movements. Finally, add the new bone for entire model controller to rotate the axis.

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