The world on a cog

[torstan]

I certainly didn't plan on a large outer cog so I didn't ratio it appropriately, so no help from me. I'll think about it though.

I love the heightmapped version. I'd probably suggest using one of the darker textures for this cog as the fire one will be the lightest - and looks a little like desert which will be pretty close in colour to this. Also, the mountains can certainly be sharper.

This is great!

[Robbie]

Here's a visualization of what I'm talking about. I'm not sure what to do about it though. I'm not a gear mechanic lol.

Note how the top right and bottom left cogs are ok...but the top left and bottom right don't line up, and they're perfectly placed equidistant from the center and from each other.

The outer ring has 270 teeth in this model.

180 to 45 to 270

[torstan]

Ah, I see. Yes, the gearing will only work if the outer ring has either 180 or 360 teeth. But then of course the number of teeth will be out, so their width will be out. I guess the teeth of the smaller cogs could be more angled so that there's a little more flexibility in the size and spacing of teeth they mesh with. Failing that (which I think will probably fail) I'd have the cogs have two levels. One on the top for meshing with the internal cog. One on the bottom to mesh with the external cog. Does that make sense?

[Ascension]

Does the outer cog really need all of the teeth to fit in every tooth of the smaller cog? Couldn't it have some sort of displacement so that the outer cog teeth hit like every other or every third tooth of the smaller cog?

[RobA]

Does the outer cog really need all of the teeth to fit in every tooth of the smaller cog? Couldn't it have some sort of displacement so that the outer cog teeth hit like every other or every third tooth of the smaller cog?

...the engineer in me shudders....

-Rob A>

[Masden]

it's quite a nasty piece of spirographic math indeed. We struggled with it for some time. Our DB engineer reckons he's got it.

Prime Material 90 diameter, 90 teeth
Elemental Planes 30 diameter, 30 teeth
Outer Planes (ring) 150 diameter to inner facing wall, 150 teeth

in one "Chronicle" (a mechanical year), there are:

+5 full rotations of the prime material
-15 full rotations of the elemental planes
-3 full rotations of the outer ring

And yes.... I wasted a good 2 days thinking about it.

To complicate the mathmatical nightmare, we are only talking about the "material planes" here. There is a complete reverse side: the prime immaterial plane, and the 3 ethereal planes.

Lastly, there is an outer ring again, known as the Celestial Ribbon, upon which the sun and moon revolve. I've almost finished a 3d model, animated for your convenience.

Torstan, do you think we could make the elemental planes a little more representative?

Mas

[Masden]

oh btw, that math doesn't hold true with tor's map, as we weren't sure about the number of teeth back then ;-(

Such a pity, but I think the elemental planes can be tweaked to hide the old teeth.

[Masden]

Oh, I'm stupid....

Just realized that you could easily double the number of teeth with no change to the ratios noted above

[Masden]

here's a jpg of the full mechanism, without the celestial ribbon

I can't do a good elevation map -not my strong point. :-/ so no uvw map or materials on the gears yet.

[Robbie]

Thats quite awesome actually. AND if you want to send that to me for the elevation portions or whatever we can collaborate on it, and I'll even render out a nice long movie because I have a render farm here for that purpose (not sure if you have access to a render farm or not)

Since you've done the modelling already I'm going to cease work on mine.