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Solidworks Assembly Animations

Question asked by Nate Parello on May 15, 2009
Latest reply on May 21, 2009 by Rob Rodríguez

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What is the best software package for animating assemblies? My company makes workholding fixtures for manufacturers. I don't need to do any studies of physics or anything along those lines, just a straight up animation to wow a customer when we do a presentation.

I've been working with Solidworks Animator but it's such a cumbersome slow program that I started wondering if there was something better out there.

I've read some posts that mention 3D Studio Max, Maya, and the new Modo 402 that will import solidworks models. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I'm not averse to learning a new program.

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Devon Sowell May 15, 2009 2:06 PM
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Hi Nate-

I've spent quite a few years supplying SolidWorks Animations to customers and here's my take;

Go out and buy your company a nice video camera and film your product being used. You'll save yourself hundreds of hours trying to make a decent animation and/or money spent on Maya, etc.
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- Devon Sowell @ Devon Sowell on May 15, 2009 2:21 PM
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  Nate-
  
  For examples of SolidWorks animations go here:
  
  http://www.pro-tools.com/
  
  My animation for the 500 hole saw took about 60 hours. Maybe others are faster, but it can be a painful process.
  
  Just image if they just went out to the shop and shot a video of this, much easier!
  
  Good luck.
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  - Corey Wallace @ Devon Sowell on May 15, 2009 2:31 PM
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    Nate,
    
    I've looked at Maya, 3DS Max, Deep Exploration and Adobe 3D Reviewer.
    
    For manipulating and rendering parts and accessories I found Deep Exploration to be the most intuitive and easy to learn...and you can import Solidworks directly. They have a good tutorial section on the web that will have you creating animations right away.
    
    If you need organic (flexible movement), you'll probably have to use something like 3DS Max or Maya...much higher learning curve here. They are nothing like Solidworks. These packages aren't really geared towards mechanical setups either.
    
    ...and as Jeff mentioned above, Hypermove, if you can wait, might be an ideal package for mechanical animations.
    
    Devon,
    
    Videos are fine for training, but I would argue you can't get even close to the "WOW" factor you can with animations to present new products. The ability to use different render styles, colors, camera movements, fly throughs, close ups, etc, can't be done the same way or at all with video.
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- David Demaria @ Devon Sowell on May 16, 2009 1:15 PM
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  Devon Sowell wrote:
  
  Hi Nate-
  
  I've spent quite a few years supplying SolidWorks Animations to customers and here's my take;
  
  Go out and buy your company a nice video camera and film your product being used. You'll save yourself hundreds of hours trying to make a decent animation and/or money spent on Maya, etc.
  
  Fair comment, but in most cases, the purpose of the animation sequence is to give a client a better understanding of what is being proposed, not of what has been made in the past. In many industries, we're talking prototypes which will have nothing in common to previous projects.
  
  Looking at your 500 Hole Saw, I agree that a short but well produced video of it in action would be of much greater value for use as a sales promo.
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Nate Parello May 15, 2009 2:19 PM
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Well, my company does custom workholding(forgot to mention the custom part in my original post). We don't have a product line that we sell standard, everything we do is designed custom for the customer's needs. While we may use similar equipment sometimes, such as vises, tombstones, uniforce clamps, etc, there is no one thing that we build that we sell to anyone else except the customer we design it for. My boss wants me to look into creating animations of our fixture concepts to show potential customers.

Basically, video taping wouldn't work as my boss wants us to be able to show a customer an animation of the design we have for them, not a general product or design that we've done for someone else.
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Jeff Mowry May 15, 2009 2:26 PM
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I currently use Animator for this sort of thing, and you're right about the cumbersome nature of this little add-on. I think this was initially sold as a feature to demonstrate that SolidWorks can animate things, after which development was quickly dropped for other marketing-bling sorts of things. From my experience, Animator has persisted several releases with the same old bugs, and it's definitely very frustrating animating anything more than a simple exploded view or rotation about an axis--but with the right hacks and patience, it can often be done.

Modo looks promising. Bunkspeed is also working on hyperMove--which, if it's as good as hyperShot, many people will be happy with that. I'll drop Animator as soon as I find something truly better at working with SolidWorks geometry. Until then, I'm stuck, too.
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Steve Ostrovsky May 15, 2009 2:58 PM
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3DVia Composer can do basic animations or highly annotative animations as well a whole boat load of other stuff. Take a look at it. Not cheap, but if you can find a use for all that it does, there's lots of time saving features in it.
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- Corey Wallace @ Steve Ostrovsky on May 15, 2009 4:06 PM
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  3Dvia Composer = not cheap = understatement
  
  ...it probably would be pretty sweet though if you have no budget limitation.
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  - Rob Rodríguez @ Corey Wallace on May 16, 2009 12:49 PM
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    I'd take a look at Modo 401 http://www.luxology.com/modo/401.animation.part.4/
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    - David Demaria @ Rob Rodríguez on May 16, 2009 1:27 PM
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      Has anyone here checked out the online gallery at...
      
      http://www.bunkspeed.com/gallery/
      
      That stuff is INSANE ! Photorealism miles ahead of much of what Ive seen out of PW. Would love to see some processing time comparins between the 2 packages actually.
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Nate Parello May 18, 2009 1:23 PM
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Does anyone have any idea when Modo 401 is due to release?
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- Rob Rodríguez @ Nate Parello on May 19, 2009 11:42 AM
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  Soon. The Modo 401 pre buy page went up Friday the 15th and the roll out events for Modo 401 start the first week of June.
  It's exciting!
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Bruce Buck May 20, 2009 2:39 PM
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Rob, I currently own a seat of HyperShot. Would you say Modo is on par or better in terms of quality? My main beef with HS is that I can't manipulate/edit models, and HyperMove is more cheddar.
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- Rob Rodríguez @ Bruce Buck on May 21, 2009 9:51 AM
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  I own a seat of HyperShot (and Maxwell Render) as well and purchased Modo yesterday.
  
  My opinion, Modo can match and really exceed HS in rendering quality. I say this because Modo has more ability than HS, for instance the ability to do displacement mapping. Modo also has animation capabilities which HyperShot does not and you'd have to also purchase HyperMove. Bottom line, Modo costs $895 and you get a lot of tools at this price. Check out www.modo3d.com and go through the reveal pages. That will give you a good idea of what it can do.
  
  HyperShot will set you back $995 for rendering, HyperMove will set you back another $2000 and you still have pixel limitations and a not so friendly licensing scheme. You also only have rendering and animation tools where as Modo gives you modeling, painting and other stuff.
  
  Modo isn't as easy to use as HS or PV360 so you'll need to prepare yourself for a learning curve. That's where I am right now............in the learning curve
  
  When 401 is officially released give the 30 day trial a try.
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