The Animation

After drawing the storyboards it was time to animate the model.
The best process of animation would be to work in areas moving forward from the back - so this meant that I started with the wheel.
My initial plan to animate the wheel was to insert a series of key frames at different rotations. However this process brought about several problems. The first issue was that it was near on impossible to maintain an even rotation. This meant that between key frames the wheel would make it rotate at different speeds - for example between frames 1 and 15 it would rotate 12 degrees, whilst between 15 and 30 it would rotate 15 degrees.
The second major problem with this process was that Max would animate the wheels rotation by moving it in the quickest process. This made it impossible to use the standard keyframe process, and I had to seek an alternative.
The solution to this problem was to use the curve editor. This is a function of which I had no experience with. To use it, I simply create the first part of the animation that I wish to loop, in my case, I create a keyframe of the wheel rotated at 179 degrees. I then right click on the object and chose curve editor.

From the top panel of icons in the curve editor I chose the button named "Parameter Curve Out-Of-Range Types".
This then presented me with another panel asking me what out-of-range type I wanted. The best option for the wheel would be either Loop, or Relative Repeat.

Loop simply repeats my keyframes on a constant basis, whilst Relative Repeat allows for a repeating animation with incremental value.
For this part of the animation Relative Repeat is the best solution.
On choosing this option, visibly nothing appears in the timeline - however once I click play, I can now see the wheel spinning continuously.
The next part of the animation that I needed to animate was the central part.
This part involved a side to side motion with the central component lifting up and rotating during the process.
Before beginning the process of animating this central section, it was important the map out what rotation the component would be at in ech position, as to create a realistic motion.
I started by creating the side to side motion. This was achieved using the loop setting in the out-of-range setting in the curve editor, and three key-frames with the central section position left, centre and right.
The next part to animate was the rotating central component, and to animate this I started by creating keyframes changing the mechanisms rotations, and then I followed this by animating its surrounding components by creating several more keyframes with the component in different positions. Finally, I used the curve editors out-of-range loop setting to make this animation loop.
The final part of the animtion was to animate the front pulleys.
It was decided that this part was the most complex and it was decided to be animated with two members of the group. Whilst the actual animation setup was simple, litterally a case of creating a back and forward motion with a rotation, it involved a lot of components and also required perfect timing. Once again, the curve editor proved useful, and the loop sequence was used again to ensure repetitive motion.
This completed the animation stage, which took several hours, mainly due to the fact that it was essential to line everything up correctly as well as time everything right.
The next stage was for another group member to add textures, bump maps and to then place it into the environment. From there, it was up to me to create some camera angles and to render the final product.