Quote: "How about conveyor belts and assembly line type machinery... "
I have been thinking about conveyor belts lately also, because I want to do a few animated models for the store.
I was thinking of working conveyors with a machine that does a function, like cap bottles.
Then placement in a corner could have to bottles without caps coming in one wall, and the capped bottles going out of the other.
Or if various machines are made, say a machine to fill the bottles, then they could be placed side by side for an assembly line.
This whole thing would be fully animated but the items would need to be just a few at one time to save polys.
I think I will make mine cans though for less poly count.
Either way, I will make a texture that allows you to easily change the item's label.
That way you could populate multiple canneries with the same machines. (I bet a lot of companies use the same brand equipment)
I love brainstorming threads, where everyone can share ideas and all benefit from it.
Edit
I had another thought to save polys.
The conveyor could be encased (to keep foreign objects out of the can), so only parts of the line would need to be see-thru.
That way a window can give us a view of the bottles/cans going by, but it is really a billboard inside instead of the objects.
Then wheels can spin showing a line of cans/bottles going down the line forever.
Two wheels can be offset as to show emptys coming in and fulls going out.
Enclosing the conveyors would also prevent the collision problems (lack of it) if the items were on an open belt.
Quote: " that would be cool, but hard."
The billboards should make it very doable for the poly count, animating, and texturing.
I just hope they will look ok.
I'm not trying to hijack your thread, just throwing ideas.
I just did a search in the store for "animated" and only got 6 items in the results.
So, I think the whole community would benefit if we had more animated stuff.
I have not been able to contribute to the store like I had hoped, so I am going to do an animated canning machine using this billboard wheel idea.
I may even use a 3 item wheel instead of a billboard.
That wouldn;t be very poly friendly, but it would create an infinite number of cans using only 3.
2nd Edit
I did a mock up showing a straight section using 3 cans. (not a wheel, but same thing)
The second view is a simulated cut out window for the video, the final would of course be different since it would be textured see thru.
The video is a bit choppy because of the recorder, and the fact that I only used 10 frames for this illustration.
The real one would have 30 to 50 frames, or even more depending on the number of moving parts. (moving rods, cylinders, etc.)
