Animate a roof opening

[YOHKOH]

Hi

 

I'm trying to do a simple animation of a roof flipping open. Like a jack in the box

 

However, I need to use one object for the box so need to animate the polygons. Is there a simple way to rotate the roof polygons around an axis.

 

When I try the axis is central to the polygon selection, so rotation does not occur around the hindge point

 

Ta very much

[erickdt]

You have to move your gizmo to the desired pivot location. Go to the hierarchy panel (next to modifiers) click "affect pivot only" and move your gizmo to the desired location. Once you get out of the hierarchy panel, the new gizmo location will be where your object pivots from.

[YOHKOH]

Thanks but this doesn't seem to work when i'm animating in sub object mode.

 

The pivot returns to a central point

[erickdt]

You may need to detach it from the rest of the mesh.

[JonRashid]

What you could do is create 4 dummy objects where you need your four pivots.

Then use linked xform and attach the relevant polygons to the relevant dummy.

Then you just animate the dummies