Animation using rapid show & hide's
Animation using rapid show & hide's
(OP)
Not too long ago someone mentioned that a nice way of doing complex animations where dragging components is undesirable because others move when you don’t want them to, was to insert several instances of a single component in an assembly, each positioned incrementally representing its start, mid, and end position. The more mid positions the better and the resulting animation is smooth and very controllable
Well I am trying to do this with a simple assembly at first but I can't figure out how to set this up in animator. I have five instances of the same component. I have placed keys to turn them on and off quickly and in the right sequence, but they still fade on and off and really don’t look like they’re moving.
Can someone help me with this? I have a presentation to do soon and I want to master this technique.
Thanks,
Tom
Well I am trying to do this with a simple assembly at first but I can't figure out how to set this up in animator. I have five instances of the same component. I have placed keys to turn them on and off quickly and in the right sequence, but they still fade on and off and really don’t look like they’re moving.
Can someone help me with this? I have a presentation to do soon and I want to master this technique.
Thanks,
Tom
Tom Malinski
Sr Design Engineer
OKay Industries
New Britain CT






RE: Animation using rapid show & hide's
I'm not the one who suggested using quick show/hide stuff for a long range of items strung together--I use it to quickly show/hide stuff in units of their basic ranges of motion. And you can achieve more difficult ranges of motion than you might think by creating surfaces in your assembly on which elements of your parts (such as a sketched point, edge, or other point) can ride for a clean path of motion.
First, if you're doing something like this, write out a story-board script of what has to do what in exactly the order you need it. If you mis-program it along the way, you'll basically have to erase your animation and start over. This is because Animator is very non-robust and will move your components as you program it--forgetting how to put it back if you need to (which is when you get the incurable red points in time). So the script is super important unless you don't mind wasting your time.
Then, make sure everything you need shown at the start of the animation is shown--same for the hidden stuff.
If you use PhotoWorks to render your animation, you'll get no fade in or out--it's always instant (like it or not--which I DON'T). Sounds like you're not using PhotoWorks, so you only need to group your keys very tightly together and it won't be an issue (like 1/10th of a second). Remember to show the second object and THEN to hide the first object and it will be seamless and take 1/5th of a second--not bad. I still don't recommend showing a long series of things in a show/hide sort of way, but in some cases you may have to. See if there is any other way you can get the ranges of motion in incremental steps to make things more fluid.
(If you search this forum more, you'll find lots posted on this.)
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.