Flywheel

Technical animation of a flywheel mechanism, for product presentation. The piece shows the assembly turning, then opens the housing to reveal the gears working inside.

It does what a technical drawing cannot: show the mechanism working. The outer housing turns translucent without stopping its rotation, revealing the internal gears actually meshing, then returns to opaque metal. The translucent material is the delicate part. It has to let you see what is behind it without erasing its own form, otherwise the housing disappears and the machine looks like it is floating loose in the air. Thickness, refraction index and specular response were tuned until the housing still reads as a solid object while you look straight through it.