Create animation in UG

[akrah]

I am quite new in unigraphics and I use NX5.
I would like to create animation of a simple assembly consisting of a shaft and a wheel which is turning. I have difficulty defining a trajectory curve and key frems.
Can anyone help me by writing the steps to follow in order to create animation

 

[hudson888]

If you have never used it before start simple. The default method tends to be the one that uses trajectory curves as a method of controlling the camera position. You should be able to select the keyframes method and just create a simple turntable motion to begin with. The standard documentation is adequate to describe how this is done.

Best regards

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

When you say 'Animation' are you talking about just making some mechanism move or are you talking about actually creating a 'movie' of some scene?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[akrah]

Hi John,

That would be great to be able to create a movie of the animation, but unfortunately I have trouble making the wheel turn around.

 

[JohnRBaker]

There are two approaches. One is to use Animation but you will need to set up your mating/assembly constraints such that you can use an expression to define say the angular position of your input (wheel) and then in the animation set up the expression so that it's a variable driven by the animation function. This is recommended if your desired output is a high-quality (rendered with shadows and material and textures and the whole bit) 'movie'.

Now if you only want a sort of screen capture AVI type of movie, then your best bet will be to use Assembly Sequencing and drive the model directly and then use something like Camtasia to capture the AVI.

Now for future reference, in NX 6 we are adding a built in AVI capture and in fact we are even building it into Assembly Sequencing so that it will automatically capture even single frame of a sequence as an AVI without even having to worry about getting the capture to synchronize with the playback which is the current limiting factor in creating AVI's of Assembly Sequencing, but that has been fully solved in NX 6.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[mmauldin]

For a simple rotation like this you can also use View>Operation>Rotate. Set the rotation axis to the axle axis and run it as a "Continous Rotate" with a small "Angle Increment". Use some thing like Camtasia to capture the motion.

Attached demo file file is 2+ MB.

 

[hudson888]

Akrah,

http://www.crackle.com/c/Animation/Stirling_Engine_CAD_Animation/2200462#ml=fi=&fu=2343490

Even a complicated looking example like this is simply created by rotating the flywheel to cause the rest of the mechanism to reciprocate.

John,

Does that mean I can get a higher resolution movie file as AVI in NX-6? And can I increase the resolution (i.e. in the order of 1600 x 900) without needing to save individual TIFF files?

Best Regards

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

Hudson,

No, the AVI's will be captured using the native screen resolution, but depending on the graphics card/display combo that you're using, that could start to climb up there in terms of 'native screen resolution'.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[hudson888]

John,

So basically a built in Camtasia? I'd think that the stumbling block there might be that thus far I've only seen that work when NX is able to display the animation in real time. Currently the engine takes 10 hours to generate 2 minutes of footage.

Best Regards

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

Hudson,

If you go back you will see that when I was talking about creating an AVI, I was NOT talking about capturing 'Animations' but rather an Assembly Sequence since they do run in real time.

To see what I mean, attached below is an AVI of an Assembly Sequence which literally was captured (in NX 6 using the built-in AVI capture) in about the same amount of time that it took to run it, which is virtually the same as the time it takes to PLAY the film clip.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[akrah]

Thank you all for your valuable input. I will try and see if I can make it.