Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
(OP)
I have a very simple mechanism with a complex 3D motion. It is a network of 9 beams with rotating joints. The motion is cyclic.
I have calculated the motion of all of the joints and generated a time history of coordinates for each one in a text file.
What I would like to do is display the mechanism as wire frame in 3D and animate it. I will need to do this many times varying key mechanism parameters. I have checked out the trajectories using nodes in my FE package but it's not really the right tool for the job.
I am considering Anim8or, OpenFX, Alice3D or maybe a student version of ADAMS. The key requirement for me is a simple text file interface for coordinates - I don't have time to learn a scripting language and I would prefer not to do it all within the animation package because I don't have time to learn it.
Any suggestions are most welcome.
Regards,
Gwolf
I have calculated the motion of all of the joints and generated a time history of coordinates for each one in a text file.
What I would like to do is display the mechanism as wire frame in 3D and animate it. I will need to do this many times varying key mechanism parameters. I have checked out the trajectories using nodes in my FE package but it's not really the right tool for the job.
I am considering Anim8or, OpenFX, Alice3D or maybe a student version of ADAMS. The key requirement for me is a simple text file interface for coordinates - I don't have time to learn a scripting language and I would prefer not to do it all within the animation package because I don't have time to learn it.
Any suggestions are most welcome.
Regards,
Gwolf






RE: Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
Nonetheless, at some point in time, you are writing a script, whether you want to call it that or not.
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RE: Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
well...yeah...about that, it is a bit difficult to do something new without learning something new. Good luck with that.
Other than that, I bet Visual Python (the module name is vpython) can do what you want.
RE: Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
A rather slow animation could be written directly in excel. But the frame rate would be sucky.
the 3d to 2d transofrmation is a one liner.
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
RE: Free Simple Wireframe 3D Mechanism Animation
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