Skip to main content
T
TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
November 29, 2013
Question

Animation - how too?

  • November 29, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 11046 views

This seems a good a place as any to open a discussion on Animation.

I have core Creo and learned a bit about animation control.

I have since learned a lot of the limitations to creating animations.

I'd like to see some of your creations. Also know who has a solid handle on this function.

I did a little fabrication sequence of a small aluminum sqill'd stem for a bike mirror.

These are things I learned rather quickly in making this video:

  • Animation is not available in Part mode. Only Assembly mode.
  • Perspective views are very difficult to manage and cause strange behavior in view interpolations.
  • Transparency interpolations ignores surface appearance assignments.
    • Assembly surface appearance do not display transparency
    • Part surface appearance is removed.
  • You cannot apply Style to patterned parts and expect them work.
  • Animating part fabrication is not the primary purpose of this application.
  • I haven't found a way to activate a section in the sequence.

Share your battle scars and your victories


This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.

2 replies

D
dschenken1-Visitor
1-Visitor
November 30, 2013

It is easier** to drive animations from outside of Pro/E-Creo. I've used VBA from Excel to generate trail/training files. It can use Part mode, or any other mode that allows screen image capture, to generate frames. The downfall is that it is open loop, so if Pro/E-Creo whatever can't regen, the trail file dies and the process stops. Using ProE this way allows features to be incrementally created - like an edge with a radius can move from .00001 to .25 to animate the change.

Today I'd go with AutoIT as it can be set to respond interactively to software failures, and can screen cap anything even if the app doesn't support it, and can drive other applications in concert.

Possibly the best combination is to drive part/assembly creation within Pro/E Creo; export to another format; render elsewhere, such as POV Ray or Blender, where it is much easier and very reliable to handle perspective, material appearances, and accurate light effects (caustics, radiosity, HDR) and there is significant experience and tools dedicated to rendering and animation.

**Other methods are more work for simple animations, but the Pro/E ceiling is very low and cumbersome to get any more than rudimentary results. Blender, for example, can motion track your model to captured video, matching perspective. POV Ray does a terrific job for texture animation and caustics. Both of them handle cameras in an easy, understandable manner.

youtube dot com/watch?v=104ou2vG3SM "Blender 3d Scene Camera Tracking / Matching" by" Play -Fair-Play"

www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=D2c7GFVbdSw "03. Camera Tracking Blender 2.5 - Dragón Marino [Making Of]" by ChincheArt

T
TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
17-Peridot
November 30, 2013

Overall, I am trying to keep this within the Creo realm but of course, I fully appreciate what other applications can do in this arena.

Since part of my responsibilities is to create comprehensive design reviews, making short animations on the fly is important. Just knowing the limitations within the Creo Animation application helps make this process more expedient.

One plus in keeping it in Creo is to have a reliable frame by frame capture. I don't have professional screen capture software and CamStudio is not even close to what internally generated captures will do. So far, I am happy with the internal Creo Capture.

D
dschenken1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2013

POV Ray and Blender create animations one frame at a time, so there is no lack of reliability to them. They also can capture frames of arbitrary resolution. Driving animation capture using AutoIT or other scripting tool also is frame-by-frame, so also no dropped frames.

In the simplest mode, use AutoIT to do screen capture to pick off what's happening in the Creo window as well as any other windows that are open. I came across a video you did that required significant effort to include a graph in the animation.

Here's the ref pages:

www autoitscript com/autoit3/docs/libfunctions/_ScreenCapture_SaveImage.htm

www autoitscript com/autoit3/docs/libfunctions/_ScreenCapture_Capture.htm

T
TonyRoberts1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2013

I've been playing around with the animation with some of the great tutorials recently posted here. However, when I go to save as MPEG, it seems to save all but the last second or so making the file un-open-able. I get the error message "The required speed for playback is out of range. Please modify your animation interval settings."

Not sure how this is adjusted nor if it means adjusting up or down? Any tips on the best way to export animation files would be appreciated.

Thanks all!

T
TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
17-Peridot
December 3, 2013

I have not run into that problem yet. I wonder if syncing the frames per second would help. Have you tried capturing a mechanism analysis as a MPEG? I wonder if this would have the same issue on your computer.

T
TonyRoberts1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2013

Feeling a bit out of sorts here..

Not sure what "syncing the frames" means or how to do it. Likewise with "capturing a mecha analysis".

Thanks in advance for any help.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement