What would be the best way to animate mechanical arms in MS3?

[GipsyD]

Another brick machine animation question...

I am trying to animate another component on my machine that is controlled by a set of two steel arms, connected to the frame through two hydraulic cylinders/rams. These arms push this component forwards and backwards through said cylinders. I've split the arms up from my original model into their respective components, namely a "upper" set of arms, a "lower" set of arms, the rams of the cylinders, and the cylinders themselves for ease in animation.

I am trying to animate the arms such like seen in this video at the 1:26 mark.

Can I animate this in MS3 natively? Or do I have to use other tools like Unity to accomplish this?

If I can do this in MS3, how would I go about doing this?

[EasyPLC_Master]

Yes of course! this can be done in MS.
Due the rotation is always the same, I mean, does not change rotation to different positions under certain conditions,this can be done very easily using the KeyFrame Animator utility (pag. 50 from Machines Simulator Instruction Guide.pdf).
Here is shown this tool:

[GipsyD]

Once again, to my rescue! Thanks so much for this. I had seen this in MS3, but wasn't sure what that feature did, let alone mess with it.

I have another question then. How do I get my component to rotate around a fixed point using Inverse Kinematics?

[EasyPLC_Master]

Easy, using the inverse Kinematic component!

In the Joaquin Pardos YouTube channel you have a lot of advanced tutorials for Machines Simulator:

https://www.youtube.com/@JoaquinPardosGuillen

There are only available in Spanish, but you can activate the subtitles with automatic translation to English.

This video explains how to use the Inverse Kinematic control:

[GipsyD]

You're right. That youtube channel is a treasure trove of tutorials for MS3. Thanks for the recommendation!