Problems animating a clock
 

I am still working on my church, and I want the clock to be able to animate properly.

I started with the large pointer. First I had the pointer on 12 (0) and pressed S. A line shows in the timeline.

THen I Pressed 15. And rotated the pointer to a quarter past 12. And pressed S again. To here, the animation works. But when I want the pointer to proceed to 30, the pointer moves backwards all the way around.

I dont know how to save animations so I cant upload an animated picture. but here is some pics to give you a clue.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...a/animate1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...a/animate2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...a/animate3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...a/animate4.jpg

not sure what you mean but i would Freze transformations.

What I mean is, that when I try to make the pointer go round (as on a normal clock) the pointer instead only makes it to 15 minutes past 12. When it should continue towards 30 past 12, it instead moves backwards all the way around, finally to 30.

check the channel box, and make sure the rotate X (or Z, depending on the model) is set to 360, and not 180 on one frame, and 0 on the next.

you know, there's a better way to do this. Instead of keying the clock hands, set up an expression on the rotate value. Reasons - the hand will rotate at the desired speed, forever. And, it won't rotate backwards. I unfortunately don't have the code on me, but its a fairly simple bit that is covered in the various expression and MEL tutorials.

Thanks! I will check it out and see if I can figure it out. I guess I can use different speed for the long and the short pointer then? To simulate real time.

the reason your hands are spinning out of control is because you're using the outer rotate ring. with this outer rotate ring maya decides how far your object rotates in all 3 axes in order to take your object from where it started to where it finished. it's safer to use the red, green, and blue rings in the rotate tool because those represent rotation in ONLY the x, y, or z axes... whichever you grab, the other two won't be affected.

an expression would definitely help to maintain a constant velocity.

I am using the green one I think. Not, the outer (if I remember correct)

I will check up the expression thingy.

As Xander suggested, MEL wouyld be the way forward, but if this is out of your league then you can key frame, and its a simple math.

1 rotate = 360 degrees
1 hour = 60 mins
15 mins = 90 degrees
keyframe every 60 frames at 90 degrees except the last one where you keyframe at 359 to allow it to go back to 0 again.

That would take care of the minute hand. The hour hand would folow the same path, but would be keyframed only every 4 th keyframe on the top of the hour.

Really MEL would be the way ahead to be honest and you would need to start looking at the time variable.