Locomotives Vehicles

Animating Walschaert’s Valve Gear for steam locos

A tutorial on how I animate Walschaert’s valve gear steam locomotives in Trainz. This tutorial covers the animation of just the Walschaert’s valve gear components, please see my “Animating steam loco driving wheels bogie for Trainz: A New Era” video for animation the wheels, coupling rods, connecting rod, and crosshead.

Addition: It has come to my attention that 3DSMax 2012 (and possibly others) handle bones a little differently, and require a few more steps to get the bones to animate correctly.

After you re-link the bones together ( at 12:34 ), follow these steps to reinitialize (for want of a better term!) the IK chain, and then follow the video after this point.
1) Click on the ‘IK chain’ object ( the blue cross)
2) Click on the ‘motion’ tab on right hand menu
3) Open the ‘IK Solver’ section
4) Click on the drop down box that shows ‘IK limb’, and select ‘IKHI solver’
5) Click the drop down box again, and select ‘IK limb’ 6) Go back to following the tutorial.

Note, the bones will move in step 4, they should move back to where they should be in step 5.

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