In my third year at University I made my Falkirk Wheel model. The project gave me a nice environment to model and a large mechanical object to rig, both of which are things that I enjoy doing.
There weren’t a lot of existing drawings of the wheel that I could find, so I had to do a bit of research and use some reference photos to make my own drawing of the wheel. In particular I had to look at how many teeth the outer ring and inner cog had so that I could properly wire it with the Reaction Manager. This way, when the wheel moved, the gears rotated in a realistic fashion in relation to each other. The gondolas and stabilising wheels also had to be wired so that they would counteract the movement of the wheel and stay level the entire time.
When all of these parameters were set, I created a set of controls that would allow easy animation of the motion of the wheel and various elements involved in that. This included the raising of gates to create a water-tight seal between the gondola and basin/canal from which water could then be drained. Next would be the locking mechanism releasing the wheel, allowing it to freely rotate. When in position again, the wheel would be locked, channel flooded and gates lowered.
In my fourth year, I revisited this scene to improve the modelling and textures adding detail to the wheel itself and the surrounding environment. You can see the initial animation from my third year project below as well as the development sketches and the final renders from my fourth year below.
