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Fading in and Collapsing Assembly

Question asked by Mark Thompson on Jan 15, 2013
Latest reply on Jan 15, 2013 by Mark Thompson

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Hi all,

I could really use someone’s help with a fairly complex animation I'm working on.

Effectively it's a large (ish) assembly with several sub assemblies that need to appear in a certain order in their exploded state and subsequently collapse into position (i.e. the animation needs to start in an exploded hidden state and each part/sub assembly needs to appear then collapse into position).

The issue is if all the assembly starts out in its exploded state with all parts/sub assemblies hidden, I can't seem to control the order in which the parts/sub assemblies show and a save just seems to make everything appear from the start, collapse and then re-explode...

I don't know if this is a bug or if I'm just performing the operations in the wrong order. Spent a good few hours on this and still no joy.

Thank you in advance.

Mark.

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Bjorn Hulman Jan 15, 2013 11:09 AM
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It might be worth animating the sub-assemblies each doing their thing and then a main assembly and compiling it in some editing software. I use editstudio http://www.mediachance.com/video/index.html, it's relatively cheap and works well. With seperate animations you get more control over the outcome post rendering. If you're not using cameras, do, they'll give better control of the view frame
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Jim Boland Jan 15, 2013 11:17 AM
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A couple of thoughts. One way to do this is to do it backwards and start with the collapsed assembly, explode all the components and then hide all the components. Once you have it done, window select all the keys and then right-click any key and Reverse the animation. This method makes the steps easier.

If you work the other way, do the whole animation without hiding or showing components first. You do this so you can see everything and grab them as neccessary. Once everything moves the way you want, then tackle the hide/show part of the animations.

When you see a case where the components make a sudden jump right after time zero, you could have a couple of things going on. Either you have a set of keys very close to the keys at time zero, or the keys at time zero were not updated after you started creating the animation. First thing I would do is to move the timebar to time zero, do a forced rebuild (CTRL+Q) and then click Calculate. If that does not solve it, move the timebar to zero, make sure all the components are at the correct starting locations, window select all the time zero keys and then click Update Keys.
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- Mark Thompson @ Jim Boland on Jan 15, 2013 3:01 PM
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  Hi Jim,
  
  I've done as you suggested and worked the animation backwards, however, when I select all (either through right clicking select all or boxing the entire time line) and right click reverse animation it makes a mess of the animation (explodes quickly and then collapses) and for some reason changes the lighting effects, tuning the model black at the start...
  
  Any thoughts?
  
  Mark.
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  - Jim Boland @ Mark Thompson on Jan 15, 2013 3:17 PM
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    A couple of other thoughts. When I do a reverse, I usually copy all the keys first and move them down the timeline so that I essentially have two copies of all the keys. I then reverse the copied keys and check to make sure it all works correctly before deleting the first (non-reversed) part.
    
    I also never start motion at time zero (except for a looping video), so I always copy all the time zero keys to 1 second. Also, I add keys for all components at the ending time of the animation so every component clearly knows where to start and where to end. By doing this, you have a clear block of keys to copy and reverse. If you do not have a good set of keys at the ending time, and you reverse the animation, the starting points of the reversed animation may not be what you think.
    
    Also, once I make the initial animation (explode in your case), I duplicate the motion study and work on the duplicate so if things go wrong I do not have to recreate everything from scratch.
    
    Hope that helps.
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    - Mark Thompson @ Jim Boland on Jan 15, 2013 3:33 PM
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      Hi Jim,
      
      That's answered a hell of a lot of my questions! I'm going to have a crack at it tongiht and see what I get. Thanks again.
      
      Mark.
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Fading in and Collapsing Assembly

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