Hi! I'm Aleksey Voznesenski, and today I'm going to show you how to animate this cute little catapult. It will drive into the scene, launch a boulder into the sky, which will soar through the clouds and plunge into a castle, and the camera will crane up to reveal the damage you have caused.
We'll model the entire scene. Starting with the catapult, we'll go through the process of setting up dynamics to make the spoon launch the rock, make the wheels turn dynamically and set up the rope that launches the payload through its elasticity. Later, we'll build the castle walls with splines and box model the towers. We'll use Booles for the windows and Cloner objects.
As the deadly ammunition hits the castle walls, we'll add particle forces to blow the walls out and a particle emitter to spit the bricks into the air causing further carnage.
And of course, what is a castle destruction animation without all the magnificent scenery? We will lay some grass, plant some trees, raise the mountains and call upon the gods of rain to bring us some clouds.
You can grab the Transform plugin here.
Part 1: Modeling the Catapult
Use the link below to download this tutorial for offline viewing.