Moho Forum

Sometimes the simplest of all solutions just don't dawn to me. I had already started to post in the "How to" section, when the right idea hit me like a brick.

The problem: I have a clock and want to show the hands progressing really visible second by second, but not smoothly.

The workflow: I set the start and end position of one revolution at frames #1 and #61, interpolation to linear (as should be done with all rotations). Now I needed keys on every frame in between. First I started to insert them in the timeline, one by one. Stupid way to do. That's where I wanted to ask the forum.

The faster way: one finger on the right arrow, one on the mouse with the rotate bones toool selected. Press arrow key, click mouse, and a key appears. Repeat until end.

Select all keys and set them to "step". Rescale Keyframes, from #1 - #61 to #1 - #1501 (this is for 25 fps). Watch your realistic clock.

Nice tip. It would have taken me awhile to figure that one out as well. Thanks for saving us the figuring.

Oh, and I should add that I have the hour hand bone angle controlled by the minute hand bone with a ratio of (guess what) 1/60.

With this, you could construct quite complex machinery with lots of cogs and gears and move them all with rotating just one bone.

I was wondering if you would mind posting the clock
ASP file for us to look at? I think I would learn
more about rotation if I could see the file.

There's really nothing to it. You could experiment yourself, all you need is a layer with 3 bones: root, and 2 rotating ones. Everything else I already wrote.

But OK, here you are: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/clock.anme.zip

And here's a test with clock and cogwheels:
http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/gear.html
Descripion:
viewtopic.php?p=69706#69706

I guess you could also have a layer with the clock arm and set the origin to where the clock arm turns. Then, set a key at 12:00 and 60 frames later set another key at 12:00. Set the interpolation to linear, and if your project's @ 1 frame per second, the clock should work correctly! I haven't tested this but from what I imagine it should work.