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Animator Hide-Show Help

Animator Hide-Show Help

Animator Hide-Show Help

(OP)
OK, this is starting to drive me nuts.  I have an assembly I'm animating, and I want a chain (sub-assembly within my assembly) to fade-in over a short period of time (>one second) to be visible, and later to fade-out in the same manner.

Normally this works just fine.  In my present assembly, instead of fading-in, the chain "pops" in suddenly--no fade or  transparency whatsoever.

I'm saving the animation at 20 frames/second, so the fade-in/out time being too short is not the issue.  One frame is invisible, the next is solid--no fade.

Any ideas?  Am I missing an options setting somewhere that prohibits the fade from being displayed?  The fade isn't working in the non-rendered SolidWorks window, nor in the rendered PhotoWorks output.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Animator Hide-Show Help

(OP)
Well, looks like this isn't possible.  My VAR got back with me on this with the following:

Quote:

Question:
A PhotoWorks rendered image does not fade to transparent during the animation. How can this be corrected?

Answer:
Animator uses color and transparency values set within SolidWorks; however when PhotoWorks renders, it will disregard the SolidWorks colors, textures and optical properties, and use the PhotoWorks material information.  There are two options to over-ride this:

1) Set the animation rendering to SolidWorks Screen.  However, this will not provide photo-realistic rendering.

2) In PhotoWorks Options, System Options, select Use SolidWorks Materials.  This option uses the SolidWorks material properties or geometry's optical properties when rendering the model.  This can be combined with certain PhotoWorks materials.  For example, if a part is set to be Spark Eroded Plastic in PhotoWorks, the rough texture would be rendered; however the color and optical properties would be taken from SolidWorks. To make it red, the color should be set in SolidWorks.  To fade a part to fade out, hide it at the appropriate point of the animation.  There are limitations to this technique; certain material illumination types (such as conductors) do not behave correctly when rendered using SolidWorks materials.

Nuts.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Animator Hide-Show Help

Brian had to post process the animations in a video editor.  He bascially did a wireframe video and a fully rendered video (both in animator)and them use animation software (Adobe if memory serves correct) to merge the two with the fade.

He did a great job!

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
President: Northern
Vermont SolidWorks User Group
www.robrodriguez.com (updated 8/12/06)
SW 2006 SP 4.0 / SW 2007 SP 0.0

RE: Animator Hide-Show Help

(OP)
Thanks, Flores and Rob--that's what I suspected had to happen with the wireframe engine block that cut away to show the pistons moving within as well (saw that one somewhere).

In this case, I could perhaps pull that off with a lot of hacks, but I need the shadows from the chains to fall onto the rest of the surroundings (imagine a tail gate).  I don't want to get rid of the PhotoWorks materials to make the fade-out/in work, so doing a composite video would be perhaps too difficult in this case.

I was able to get clearance from the client for "pop-in" chains, but it would definitely be better to have a fade.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Animator Hide-Show Help

Actually, the engine animation (also done by Brian Hill) is all animator and PhotoWorks.  The casting is a transparent PW material and the wire frame is created using the Contour option.

http://www.bxhdesigns.com/site.htm

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
President: Northern
Vermont SolidWorks User Group
www.robrodriguez.com (updated 8/12/06)
SW 2006 SP 4.0 / SW 2007 SP 0.0

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