Rotor Blade Animation

[mac1]

This is my first attempt, does anyone know how to accurately animate rotor blades for helos, expecially with the drop of the blades at engine startup to full power

[Joey B]

I'm not really into animation, so probably I'm going to write a load of crap down now, but here's an idea:

the rotation shouldn't be a problem, just animate one revolution and let that repeat over the desired number of frames. You can stretch the animation in the beginning, because the speed of the blades will increase from zero to topspeed at startup.

If I'm correct, you can animate modifiers also, so for the drop of the blades you could use one or more bend modifiers, and set them to 100% at count 0. Then set them at 0% when you're at topspeed, and you should have a decent animation...

One note: If the blades have to deliver power, the blade-tips wil rise out of the horizontal rotation plane, so you could even end with a negative value on your bend parameters while at top-speed.

J.