How to build an animated diorama

Have any questions or tips and advice on how to build those bits that don't come ready made.
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PinkNosedPenguin
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by PinkNosedPenguin »

Looking good TimberSurf - keep the updates coming . . .
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

So next up comes the rotating head. The base is made and fitted with a brass tube that will slide into a slightly larger one as the axis.
Why tube? Because all the electrics will pass through it, as there are two motors up top (main sail and tail rotor)
Windmill top shaft for wiring.jpg
Windmill top shaft for wiring.jpg (35.9 KiB) Viewed 2508 times
A crank arm is fitted at the bottom for attachment to the wall mounted servo
Windmill axis shaft bottom servo arm.jpg
Windmill axis shaft bottom servo arm.jpg (19.91 KiB) Viewed 2508 times
Two curves are fashioned with the aid off a hair dryer to form the canopy and three screws hold it on, so that it can be removed for motor maintenance.
Windmill Cap beginnings.jpg
The casing for a micro planetary gearbox is added to drive the tail fan
Windmill tail fan motor mounting.jpg
After the tail fan was made, the position of the motor/gearbox had to be radically changed to get the thing to work! :oops:
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Lumsdonia <--- Hit link to go to my website for full story and wiring advice!
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

Try as I might to think of a ready supply of fan, none came to mind, so I set too cutting segments from a circle and gluing them to spokes and then to a washer using a tiny jig to help set and maintain the angle
Windmill fan construct.jpg
The frame was also difficult, as it was so delicate, not helped by the glue not forming a good weld onto my cheap Chinese styrene strip.
I ended up drilling holes in the ends and reinforcing some joints with brass bar. By the time I had tried various types of glue and repaired failed joints, I must have assembled the frame about eight times!
Windmill Fan Frame rebar.jpg
After sorting the frame, bearing holes were made for a brass bar shaft, a tube was glued to the washers of the fan and trued up so that a rubber band can be used as the drive. A small platform was made and stuck on, finally starts to look whole!
Windmill fan WIP.jpg
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

With the head assembled, it was time to join to the base
Windmill three parts together.jpg
Lighting partion and LED added
Windmill partition light.jpg
Cross strip added with aligned hole to act as bearing for the head shaft and tie the bits together with servo couplings
Windmillcentral shaft inards.jpg
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

Next comes the base
An adventure into extruded polystyrene, buying it (nightmare),cutting it (cracked it good style) and gluing it (inseparable!)
A little sketch in 3D CAD helps with the cutting list.
A side venture into investigating then designing and making my own hot wire cutter, resulted in two superb tools! and lead to a
Lumsdonia Hot Wire Guide!
Some casting of some walls including a curved one!
Investigation and creation of (Lumsdonia) sculptamold recipe resulted in a fantastic covering (plaster bandages begone!)
A quick undercoat of emulsion and some gravel tracks and we are ready to Scenic it!
Windmill base stages x5 text.jpg
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Lumsdonia <--- Hit link to go to my website for full story and wiring advice!
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Mountain
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by Mountain »

Interesting so far....
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

Next comes the detail, fences, home made hedge, walls, shrubbery, flowers, a gate and finally some trees.
Img_0035ts12.jpg
Canon_01610167ts12.JPG
Windmill left field 12.jpg
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PinkNosedPenguin
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by PinkNosedPenguin »

I'm hoping you are going to cover the actual animation in much more detail :D - for example:
  • which servo and controller
  • how connected up physically
  • how programmed
etc.
8)
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

Hi PnP, yes this is part 1 "The build story". Part 2 will be about getting it running automatically (using an Arduino)
Let me finish part 1 then I can field all the questions!
Canon_01560162t12.JPG
Canon_01410147t12.JPG
Canon_01860192t12.JPG
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PinkNosedPenguin
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by PinkNosedPenguin »

TimberSurf wrote:Hi PnP, yes this is part 1 "The build story". Part 2 will be about getting it running automatically (using an Arduino)
Let me finish part 1 then I can field all the questions
Yes of course - looking extremely good so far . . . :D
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luckymucklebackit
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by luckymucklebackit »

Beautiful diaorama Timbersurf! Lovely modelling.

Jim
This Signature Left Intentionally Blank, but since I have written this and I intended to do it, this Signature is intentionally not blank. Paradox or What?
My layout - Gateside and Northbridge
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

Cheers Jim

Well it has been a great exercise, not only has it pushed me to develop home made materials materials, home made tools and my skills base, but it has also been an instigator to push my photography skills as well(the video side).


So here is the Animated Windmill Diorama video
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Lumsdonia <--- Hit link to go to my website for full story and wiring advice!
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PinkNosedPenguin
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by PinkNosedPenguin »

Yes a great exercise indeed = food for thought :idea:: as I don't have a layout at present maybe I ought to consider making a small diorama to:
  • dust off those scenery skills
  • develop new ones and try some different things
  • provide a nice stage for photographing my slowly growing collection of O-16.5 locos and stock
  • maybe even try out something animated? (I am an IT developer by trade, so a bit of programming would be interesting)
Hmmm . . . :?:

Edit: OMG I only just noticed your video link :o - very good indeed! I like the change in focus on some of the 'slides' . . .
Now I have to ask - how did you do the car animation? A real (Faller-like) moving vehicle or photo-trickery?
An all round excellent piece of work - I've clicked to be notified when part 2 is ready 8)

P.S. to make videos more prominent on this site, I have taken to providing an image from it as the clickable link (you've probably seen some of mine?)
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

As this was originally conceived as a competition entry of "Two buildings that have been re-purposed", there was no need for any functionality, but it would be a waste of a great model/effort to simply languish around as a diorama. So I hatched the cunning planned to make it as a drop in base into a hole, in my eventual layout. Thus (for me) making it work seemed critical, so I envisaged that I would retrofit the mechanical mechanisms after the competition. This idea was of course flawed, as they need to be incorporated in the core design and disassembling later to retro fit would be fraught with issues. So I conceived the design as a whole from the beginning of the build.
Both buildings were blacked out and partitioned, to accept two LED's with appropriate resistors, they were wired with common positive and two negatives to a 3 terminal servo wire. this protrudes from the base to drop into a hole in the diorama underneath were the building sits. i.e. each building has separate control over two lights (4 circuits for the diorama).

The Windmill head is fitted with two motor/gearboxes. A metal one drives the main windmill sail directly (the shaft protrudes out the front), a plastic planetary with a bit of plastic tube over the output shaft is fitted at the rear of the head that is connected via a rubber band to the drive shaft of the tail fan externally. Each is wired to long single leads that run through a long brass tube which is fixed rigidly at right angles to the base of the head, down to the lower base of the windmill to a 4 way connector. The brass tube sits in short lengths of slightly larger brass tube that act as the bearings and are glued to the building base near top and bottom. The base of the long tube has a boss attached that is linked via a crank arm to a servo motor, thus the shaft (windmill head) can be rotated about 120 degrees. All 4 motor cables plus the servo lead, can be poked through the hole in the diorama with lighting lead (also a servo type connector mentioned earlier)
Windmill wiring.jpg
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TimberSurf
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Re: How to build an animated diorama

Post by TimberSurf »

PinkNosedPenguin wrote:Yes a great exercise indeed = food for thought :idea:: as I don't have a layout at present maybe I ought to consider making a small diorama
Definately, or why not make it a small plank you can Marshall trains on? (2ftx 1ft)
PinkNosedPenguin wrote:
OMG I only just noticed your video link :o - very good indeed! I like the change in focus on some of the 'slides' . . .
Cheers
PinkNosedPenguin wrote: Now I have to ask - how did you do the car animation? A real (Faller-like) moving vehicle or photo-trickery?
Trickery! My new camera makes stop motion photography a cinch!
PinkNosedPenguin wrote: P.S. to make videos more prominent on this site, I have taken to providing an image from it as the clickable link (you've probably seen some of mine?)
I have cracked this before, but it is different (read easy) on other forums, so have forgotten the code. I can do this,

Image

but how do you get the pic with the play button in the middle?
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Lumsdonia <--- Hit link to go to my website for full story and wiring advice!
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