Cyclist tutorial needed.

[Dick Ma]

I don't understand How to use Cyclist instead of using manpower to rotate the wheel of a travelling bicycle in LW....

then I will finish my first 40 secs animation.

[hrgiger]

Yeah Dick, here's a quick tutorial I whipped up just now.

Ok, here I Have a weirdly textured ball in Layout. You can imagine it's a wheel, hey it's round.

[hrgiger]

Ok, next load a null into layout and name it something like wheel control or ball control or whatever.... Move it out of the way so you can see it.

[hrgiger]

Next you want to give your wheel (ball) a keyframed rotation. For my example, I gave it a 360 degree bank rotation at frame 60. You now have one full rotation keyframed. Scrub through to make sure you got it right.

[hrgiger]

Now for Cycler. Select your ball (wheel) object and open up the graph editor. In the channel bin, select the channel you wish to apply cycler to, in my case that was the bank channel and under channel modifiers, select cycler.

[hrgiger]

In the Cycler panel, you want to find your control null and double click the channel of the control null you want to use for the control. In my case, it's the Y direction of the null. Put 0-60 in the cycle start and end frame and leave the others at the default.

[hrgiger]

Now all you have left is to keyframe the motion of the control null which will drive the turning of the ball. Keyframe your ball at 1m on Y at frame 60 and then keyframe it at -4m on Y at frame 120. Now if you scrub through the animation, you'll see the ball complete one rotation from frames 0-60 and then reverse and speed up for frames 60-120.

EDIT: Dick, in the case of your bike, you would most likely parent the null to the bike so that as the bike moves, the null will drive the wheels. However, if your bike is changing directions, I'm not sure how that would work.

[Dick Ma]

hrgiger:

I mean "Cyclist" under the Motion Options...not Cycler

my bicycle is vary in speed...so I think the Cycler cannot adopted in this case. but your tutorial reminds me about how to do other animation using Cycler...

thanks.

[hrgiger]

Oh, sorry, I haven't used cyclist, I'll have to look into that. Well, hopefully, that will help someone who wants to use cycler...;)