Flying Machine

A procedural animation project from flying machine.
Responsible for all aspects, using Houdini render with Redshift and composite lighting in Nuke.

Breakdown

creating the balloon with vellum cloth, blowing up the balloon with rope and constrain. I later decided to reshape to a sphere, mimic the moon.Once cached out, the balloon is animated using sine wave expression to mimic a subtle floating motion.

The main driving force of the machine is the wheel rotation with the handle.

Two point constraints are used for the rods that control the flaps. I only created one attribute wrangle node and used the same rotation / angle then applied to different rods since they are connected and they have the same rhythm of motion.

Another mechanic that uses 2 point constraints is the wheel on the top floor of the ship.

Point follow is the most used method of my mechanic to ensure that different parts would move together properly. Point follow is also used with two point constraints too.

Creep nodes are used to create rope that animate along the wheels.

References
https://deborahrfowler.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SaRpyFSoxY
https://allaboutsteampunk.com/steampunk-and-kinetic-art/