Animation help!

[ProDarwin]

I need to make an animation of one of my designs for an upcoming visit here. I have some experience with this, but I can't seem to figure out how to hide/display different components during an animation. I'd like to show my assembly coming together piece by piece... any help would be much appreciated.

Travis

 

[ProDarwin]

I guess I should clarify more: I know I should use an "appearance event", but when I select a part it shows a start and finish "style", but there is no list to choose others from. Both just say "(Use Part Style)"

 

[SolidMastermind]

Hi Travis,

You should have afull list of colours in the Start and Finish dropdown menus. The default is 'Use Part Style' though.
you should also have 2 other options that say '0% Visible' and '50% Visible'

Are you saying you don't have these?

Jon

Jon Sutcliffe / Solid Mastermind
The Solid Edge Community. Video training sessions, best practice documents, process maps and interactive training

http://www.SolidMastermind.com

 

[ProDarwin]

Yeah, let me grab a screenshot... I don't have dropdown menus for Start and Finish.

 

[SolidMastermind]

Does this still happen if you log in as a different user?

Jon Sutcliffe / Solid Mastermind
The Solid Edge Community. Video training sessions, best practice documents, process maps and interactive training

http://www.SolidMastermind.com

 

[ProDarwin]

Well, I grabbed to phone to call GTAC and as I was waiting, the menus appeared while I was playing with the pathfinder. I had the pathfinder and the edit definition/edit menu separate on my 2nd monitor. When I combined the two, the menus appeared. Odd.

Anyway, the animation I exported really sucks - the fade in/fade out (@60fps) doesn't really "fade" at all. Its essentially instant.

 

[SolidMastermind]

Very odd..... glad it's sorted

Sometimes it can help turining the VHL off when you are fading parts in and out. With VHL on the part appears visible until it is completely switched off as there is no dimming done on the models edges.

Jon Sutcliffe / Solid Mastermind
The Solid Edge Community. Video training sessions, best practice documents, process maps and interactive training

http://www.SolidMastermind.com

 

[beachcomber]

I've tried saving videos from the old Simply Motion, or whatever it was called, and they were pathetic.
If you are doing these things regularly and the assemblies are not too complex I would have a look at Bunkspeed.
You can get HyperMove on 30-day trial.

http://www.bunkspeed.com

This image done 'out of the box' with HyperMove trial.


bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

Where would we be without sat-nav?

 

[SolidMastermind]

Nice image, even more impressive is that it is done out of the box.

SE rendering tools definately need to be enhanced inline with some of the other offerings out there on the market now.

Jon Sutcliffe / Solid Mastermind
The Solid Edge Community. Video training sessions, best practice documents, process maps and interactive training

http://www.SolidMastermind.com

 

[beachcomber]

Wow Jon, real time replies!
By out of the box I mean all I did was apply standard materials and render at default settings.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

Where would we be without sat-nav?

 

[SolidMastermind]

Another real time reply here
what format did you use to import into hypermove?

Jon Sutcliffe / Solid Mastermind
The Solid Edge Community. Video training sessions, best practice documents, process maps and interactive training

http://www.SolidMastermind.com

 

[Gemnoc]

Don't know about HyperMove, but I tried Hypershot, and the only format out of SE that Hypershot recognized was STEP.

It's a terrific program. Setup takes 30 seconds, and even screenshots taken in real-time after leaving the screen generate for about 20 seconds on my 3GHz dual-core CPU were great looking.

 

[Gemnoc]

Didn't have time to add: IGES was also recognized. Hypershot plugins were available for Solidworks, SpaceClaim, Kubotek KeyCreator, Pro|Engineer... But no Solid Edge.

BTW there was some big changes at Bunkspeed earlier this year: following a dispute with the raytracing engine owner (who was also working at Bunkspeed!), their license was revoked. So they had to pull out Hypershot and are now preparing a new version with a different rendering engine. They couldn't keep the name either, so they renamed their whole product line: Hypershot is now Bunkspeed Shot, HyperMove is Bunkspeed Move.

And to make matters more complicated, the now defunct Hypershot spun off another product, KeyShot bu Luxion, the company that was providing Hypershot's ray-tracing engine.

http://www.keyshot.com/

 

[Gemnoc]

"KeyShot bu Luxion" should have read "KeyShot by Luxion".

Sorry for the triple post...

 

[beachcomber]

Sorry I broke the 'real time thread' - I had to walk the dog.
Gemnoc has it correct, I used STEP but the transfer is really quick and you don't need the intelligence anyway.
I also tried Luxion Keyshot and that is also quick.
A 15 day trial is available, and that's what I had on my laptop. You get a few backgrounds with that trial but can't save the renderings or any of the setup. You need to do a screen-grab to keep the image but the results are just as good.
One thing I haven't found in either program is how to zoom in on small parts, other than by scaling the model.

This one was done in KeyShot, saved as a screen grab then clipped with Paint, so no post-processing. It took a few minutes to set up and apply the materials and get the scale and orientation about right but rendering time was only about 3 minutes on 2.1GHz Core2Duo,4MB ram laptop.
The trial has run out now.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

Where would we be without sat-nav?

 

[Gemnoc]

One thing I haven't found in either program is how to zoom in on small parts, other than by scaling the model.

Hey BC,

First thing you can change the camera settings in the preferences (going by memory here). By default the camera is set at 44mm, you can put it to 28mm (wide angle) to get an exagerated perspective for example. 200mm (or even bigger) will bring a small object closer, like it would with a real camera's telephoto.

Then, if you want to zoom in into the scene, I believe the shortcut is ALT+mouse right button and drag.

 

[beachcomber]

Thanks Gemnoc, I'll try that on Hypermove.
I think I've got another week or so left on that one.

bc.
2.4GHz Core2 Quad, 4GB RAM,
Quadro FX4600.

Where would we be without sat-nav?

 

[ProDarwin]

Well, looks like this thread got a tad off topic, but I could use some more help... I made an animation, but the gradient background looks like CRAP, even when I export at 100% quality uncompressed. See picture here:

http://s12.photobucket.com/albums/a216/ProDarwin/?action=view&current=animation.jpg

Anything I can do about this?

 

[SolidMastermind]

I normally set the background to a single colour for rendering / avi output. Specifically to overcome this problem with the gradient backgrounds looking like this.

Also make sure that you render the scene first so that the light works rendering is activated. Make sure all your materials, lighting and background are as you want them.

When exporting the avi file, make choose the 'Presentation View Style' option. Each frame will then be rendered using the Lightworks engine and give a much better result than when using the default view style.


Jon Sutcliffe / Solid Mastermind
The Solid Edge Community. Video training sessions, best practice documents, process maps and interactive training

http://www.SolidMastermind.com

 

[ProDarwin]

Thanks, I switched to a non-gradient background, but now SE crashed and is being a general pain in the ass. I haven't been this frustrated with the software in quite some time. Will report back when I can actually get it to do something without royally @#$%ing up.