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Anmimation best practice/options 2

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macPT

macPT

Mechanical
Oct 22, 2002
607
I all

I need to make a presentation of a PV power plant. I am using Animation with a floating camera to "walk through" the plant. I am new to this task. I am using SW2008 SP4.0 and Animation in RealView mode (I am not using PhotoWorks).

I looks great, but I am experiencing some anoying problems that can ruin an otherwise great presentation:

- detail missing: some details are missing (some small parts or subassemblies) and it seems that SW takes total control over it without rules (some parts are missing in one animation and are present in other). Is there a place where I can control it ?(like the level of detail in assemblies?) Is it related to graphics card?(please note thate these missing details are set to be visible, even if they don't show)

- details sudenly missing: when walking arrond, there are details (parts and sub assemblies) that are sudenly missing and reapear a few seconds later (between 2 key points). I think it can be related with the distance between camera's lense and bodys. But I can't realy discover a cause/effect relation (having a higher distance does not allways solve). Can I realy control this? Again, can it be graphics card related? (please note thate these missing details are set to be visible, even when they disapear)

- tilting camera: in some cases (again, I can't find a cause) the carmera tilts 90 degrees between 2 key points, neither of them with tilting angles. I can usualy control this issue by changing a litle bit the walking path.

So, can you help giving me hints about solving these problems and about using best practices for Animation? Do you know any toturials?

Regards

 
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OS - XP Pro x64 SP2
PC - HP xw4400 Workstation (Intel 6320@1,86GHz)
RAM -3GB
VC - ATI Fire GL V3350

I know the video card it's not an high end card, but it's being performing well designing parts or assemblies, with no noticeable problems.

Regards
 
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Yes, it´s listed. But I am going to install a newer one (this one not listed) and give it a try.

So, in your opinion, can the problems be VC related?


Regards

 
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Bad news. I disagree. Animator has huge bugs in this area. Which version of SW are you using? I'm up to v2007 and have problems like this, particularly when NOT using PhotoWorks. Maybe it has something to do with graphics card issues, but nothing I've done has been able to correct it.

Try this. Before saving your animation, gently hold your animation's hand by dragging the time bar through the whole thing VERY slowly. Back up if parts are missing and then move forward again. This has helped me in the past. Speak nicely to Animator. When you're about to lose your temper, do it in the other room, where Animator cannot hear what you say or the dog yelping when you kick him. After moving the time bar through the whole animation, place it back where you need to start the animation and then save it to a file (allowing it to run). I think this works because Animator is very forgetful and cannot remember all the work you've put into your Animation. Animator is also a slacking vandal, and will break things randomly. Sometimes you can get what you need, and sometimes you must rebuild the animation from scratch.

Whatever you do, don't tell Animator I wrote this. This never happened.



Jeff Mowry
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.
 
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Theophilus

Thanks for yor advice! It is strange, but I will give it a try.

You are right about the vandal thing (now I am whispering into your ear so Animation wont ear me): I tryied to run the same model in another PC (nothing was changed) and, suddenly, the camera was boldly going where no camera as gone before!

I'm with 2008SP4.0, so it seems that there's no improvments. But from your words, I understand that the behaviour using Photoworks will be better: am I right?

Regards
 
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I'm taking a big risk here, with another reply, considering I've got another big job coming up that will involve Animator--so let's keep this confidential.

The behavior will be better on a per-frame basis using PhotoWorks (it seems to keep everything in the scene and render it), but we have another problem with that whole thing (unless this was changed in 2008, but I don't think it was). The problem is that your materials may render totally differently in PhotoWorks than whatever you're happy with in RealView. (The other problem is going the other direction--you cannot use PhotoWorks materials and fade-in, fade-out parts. How stunningly limited is that?)

For your camera, I suggest adding a path and creating a "sled" part with a point in a sketch to constrain it to the fly-through path. Mount your camera to this sled part. Now, when you move your sled part, your camera moves. The best reason for using this method is that you can better constrain motion. So if you don't want your camera tilting, assign a perpendicular mate between your camera sled and the top plane of your assembly--and then pray Animator will still let you move the sled at all. It will move fine in regular SolidWorks, but Animator will probably have an unpredictable fit. (The difficulty with Animator lies in discovering all the undisclosed, quite-well-hidden rules--since it does not behave with the same rules of motion as regular SolidWorks.)

Another issue with the camera path--make sure the entire path is a single segment of sketch entities, or you'll be stuck on a single straight line or arc. You need to do whatever works to get there--kludge together a series of 3D or 2D sketches and then use either the Compound Curve to create a single curve or the Fit Spline feature to convert all the entities to a single spline feature. I seem to remember Animator not allowing motion or respecting constraints along a Compound Curve, so I think you'll need to mate it to the spline segment.

Again--and this is VERY important--none of this ever happened.



Jeff Mowry
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.
 
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[noevil]

The PhotoWorks and Animator gods see all and know all ... you are doomed, DOOMED, DOOMED!

It's a real pity ... your contributions here will be greatly missed.

[cheers]
 
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Hi

I am not back again in this thread that never existed discussing everything but Animator (it is standing in front of me so, Theophilus, lets pretend we are talking about something else).

I am geting better results regarding sudden component disepearence. I've found that the cameras suffer from "pitch blindness". In certain pitch angles, some components disapear. For now I am not certain about the rules, but I am modifying my movie avoiding small pitch angles. For now, this issue is not hardware nor OS related (the same erros are repeated in different hardware and OS) and changing cartesian camera position, yaw and roll also seems to have no effect.

In my first post, I have already mentioned that I can avoid camera's tilting by changing a bit the camera's path.

About loosing detail, I have no news.

Regards
 
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So what's the weather like there? No news in detail loss even when slowly dragging the time-line through the animation (and NOT rebuilding after) just before saving the animation to file? That's nice. We're near 70° here, but I think it will rain.



Jeff Mowry
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.
 
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Today it was a bit hot (around 82) but rainy. The slowly drag seems to have no effect on my vanishing parts. But I have more detail !!!! Maybe I'm not doing it right. When you refer to save the animation, you mean as an avi file, right? The wather here is becoming more and more like in the tropics.

Regards.
 
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Now it's cooler and rainy. Floods are everywhere.
I tried to do the drag trick but, having a 3min30s animation, I gave up.
But one thing I've found: working on the animation degrades the quality until a certain extent. The best results are achieved closing the file, reopen and immediatly save the movie. Any prior adjustment or visualization will degrade the movie quality. If any adjustement is needed, it's necessary to close the file and reopen before saving the movie. It seems to me that this as the same effect as the slow drag trick.
The degradation also seems to be hardware/OS independent.
The rain stopped in the afternoon and the day ended necely. Maybe tomorrow will be hot again. Now, we never know...

Regards
 
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Fall has definitely arrived here--aspens explode in their colors all over the mountainsides. You're totally hosed, but feel free to discover more hidden rules in attempt to get a decent animation. I know what that's like. Perhaps you could use PhotoWorks in saving your animation, and run it overnight to save a bit of time? Might work. Enjoy the recently-rainy weather.



Jeff Mowry
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.
 
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As a fellow Animator devotee I think the best method aside from kicking the dog is to speak in code.

Animator = Banana
Doing crazy things = Flawless
Randomly disappearing = Reliable
My life and career are over because of Animator = enjoyable

Eg. My banana is flawless and everything I've modeled is reliable and is making things enjoyable.

60% of the time, it works every time.
 
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