Simple Animations in Creo? PTC, are you listening.....

[DamianCastillo]

When are we going to get the ability to create Simple Animations in the core license of Creo? Are we ever?

SolidWorks allows you to freely move your components in an assembly to simulate how it will operate in motion. It also allows you to easily create animations that can be exported out in a movie file. Why is it that PTC has failed to recognize the advantage of this and does not have something similar to offer us.

In a Creo Assembly, you can't drag your components around and see how things work. You must have Mechanisim extension installed. This is also true for making simple animations.

Does anyone else here know if a TC group is discussing this with PTC. Something so fundamental is missing and their main competitor has offered it for many years.

On that note. Does anyone have any recommendations for creating animations of Creo assemblies by using other software such as Blender? I want to experiement with this but if someone has already documented the process, I would love to know about it.

Thanks

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

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[dgschaefer]

The foundation license has included basic mechanism functionality for
many releases, back to WF2 at least. (Animations are a different
story.) Are you working off an old license bundle?



Doug Schaefer

[FredMatthis]

I have run simple animations in Creo 1 and Wildfire 5 and created movies (mpg.).


In Creo Go under Applications - animations
I forget where to look in Wildfire 5

You will have to find a tutorial to learn how to use it.
It's not very user friendly.


Fred J. Matthis
-

[ptc-1932745]

I have done some simple 6-12 component animations in Blender as a test
about a year ago. It is worth looking into.



Probably easiest to bring in the components into blender using .stl
format from Pro-E. Crank down the .stl min edge size in the Pro-E
export (I usually set this to 0, and then Pro-E will enter the smallest
value it can cope with), and then tweak the polygon count in Blender to
get efficient # of polygons for good animation / rendering speed.



Blender has a 'busy' interface, but it is consistent and the graphic
'timeline' window for animations makes sense (to me at least). There is
no 'mate' references in Blender that I know of to line parts up, but I
believe that there are measurement and precision moves allowed to keep
everything together, also parts can be moved in groups, and using
'skeletons'.



Good luck,



Christopher F. Gosnell



FPD Company

124 Hidden Valley Road

McMurray, PA 15317

[MikePhillips]

I thought I might add a comment for Blender. I've used it several times to
render ProE files in the past. I've found that exporting from ProE using
the Wavefront (.obj) file type works well. By using this option the colors
you have set in ProE also carry over to Blender. I don't think that is the
case with an .stl file.

Mike Phillips

[ptc-1932745]

I agree. I don't spend much time in Pro-E defining accurate colors,
textures, etc... I do all surface maps in blender.



Christopher F. Gosnell



FPD Company

124 Hidden Valley Road

McMurray, PA 15317

[DamianCastillo]

Great feedback so far.

I am going to investigate the Animation option under the "Applications" tab. I don't know if this is available for the core license which is what we want. If it's not user friendly, this will at least give PTC an area to improve on.

What I can't understand is why does it have to be so hard. Animations are a breeze in so many applications. Even Maya has an easy to understand Animation process. You move the object to where you want it and make a key frame. Now move it to where you want it to end and Maya fills all the frames between to make a quick animation.

What we want is a super simple way to create animations. I want to capture a key frame, then move a component easily to a new location, add a key frame and let the software fill in the animation for me. Then all you need is different tracks to move multiple things at once. This is not hard PTC.

Let me play with the Animation option and see what it's like. I will report back.

Thanks again for the tip Fred.

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

[DamianCastillo]

Update:

Fred was correct. If you select Animation under the Applications tab, you will be able to create animations. I still need to confirm this is included in all core licenses of Creo. If that's the case, we are half way there.

I created 3 animations and the process is not user friendly at all. In fact, it's horrible. But it does work which is half the battle. Now if we can get PTC to make this process actually useful and friendly, it would be great.

The icons don't make much sense, the process for animating part movement vs screen movement is confusing. The keyframe process is down right confusing.

There you have it.

Can anyone confirm that the Animation option is in fact a core license feature and not something you have to purchase. We have Mechanism Design and Dynamics and I want to make sure that the Animation option has nothing to do with that.

Thanks

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

[FredMatthis]

Damian

I have been using animations for only a while.
Here are some things that I learn the hard way.

1) when starting a new animation, do not use "snapshot" use "explode". (Model animation - New animation)

If you use snapshot you will lose any color that you have on your parts after you have so many parts in your assemble.
Also the parts seem to loose their position after you run the animation a few times. (very weird)

2) use "view manager" to create all of your "explode" views. This is where you will position your parts for each view.

3) use "view manager to create "style" view. This is where you will blank out the parts that you do not want to show at any given time.
4) Create named views if you want to zoom in or out of your assembly.

There is also a place to create an "event" in your animation.
This is the only thing that I can not figure out what it does.
PTC documents just say that you can create an event, they don,t explain what it is or give any examples.

This whole process is VERY time consuming, but it does look good when you are finished.


Lots of luck


Fred J. Matthis
-

[andrew1]

Guys, FYI, I created this shortanimation and video a long, long time ago as I learned to use the Pro/E Animation module.

[DamianCastillo]

Fred,

Thank you for the valuable nuggets. You almost supplied enough for a Happy Meal. 🙂

Andy,

Thanks for sharing the animation you created. It gives a good and simple example of what you can create.

I found this document that shows you the very basics but it's based on Wildfire 3. If you look at the icons, you can figure out where things have moved in Creo and in other cases you can play some and figure out how to follow along. It's a very basic tutorial but it made a world of difference in getting started.

As I looked at the animation screen, I had no idea of where to start and what to do. This document got me moving in the right direction. I attached it for your reference.

Thanks again and please keep the information flowing. Maybe we can get enough people messing with this to ask PTC for a more polished solution.

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

[Chris3]

FYI for those that have it ProductView can create animations as well and for some things it is easier.



Chris



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[DamianCastillo]

After playing with Animations for at least 6+ hours, I can finally say this....

IT'S HORRIBLE.

This has to be the worst implementation of Animation software I have ever seen in my life. I have created Animations is several other applications and it's FAR easier than what PTC offers. I was able to figure out how to Animate something in Maya easier than Creo.

I created an animation with two tracks and if I animate each individually, it works fine. When I animate them together the animation breaks the part apart. I have components flying in directions that are not part of any Snapshot. This is terrible.

Adding keyframes is so confusing because I can't rename them individually for each track. At least I can't figure out how to name them and this says a lot for user friendliness.

PTC, This is a JOKE. You need to redo the entire Animation UI and features in Creo or you will never meet your goal of being the most user friendly CAD system.

I am now going to export my models to Blender to do animations.

"Too many people walk around like Clark Kent, because they don't realize they can Fly like Superman"

[BrianMartin]

Hi Damian...

I totally feel your pain here and I agree. Here's a bit of advice... if you're doing anything short of full blown mechanism animations, do not use Pro/ANIMATE.

Instead, use Creo View. Hopefully you have access to at least one standard license of Creo View. You can literally make a simple animation directly from a Creo/ProE model in seconds with features sorely lacking on Pro/ANIMATE. You can select hardware and have them unscrew themselves... then fade out. You can easily animate a model from an assembled to an exploded state while spinning the model in space and cross-sectioning it, too.

Creo View is everything you'd want in Pro/ANIMATE without the indescribably frustrating hassles and problems. Anyone can download Creo View Express (ProductViewExpress) for free. I believe you'll need at least a standard license to perform animations, though.

Thanks!
-Brian

Brian K. Martin
Sr. Mechanical/Application Engineer
SGT, Inc. under contract to
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

301.286.0059 (NASA Office)
443.421.2532 (Cell)
-

[iceblink1]

I just want to say that the comparison with Maya is totally unfair.

Maya (formerly Alias) started out as animation software from the start,
dating back as far back as 1998. Pro/Engineer is and has been a CAD
tool, with animations being nothing more than a nice-to-have extra. (If
you bought Pro/E to create animations, you have yourself to blame for
the inconvenience, cause then you bought the wrong software.)

Not that I don't agree that PTC often creates half-baked software
solutions, but let's judge them in a fair way 😉
How do other CAD tools like Unigraphics or Catia so in the animation
department? Does anyone know?

Blender is also a dedicated animation tool, so I think you'll be much
happier using that.

Best regards,
Patrick Asselman

[HugoHermans]

I agree with Patrick. A niche player, focused on a particular function, is always (mostly) superior compared to a general tool. Of course, there is nothing wrong with comparing tools, but in the comparison, the advantage of using one general tool to tackle a wide variety of activities should be part of the comparison.

Met vriendelijke groeten,Best Regards,

Hugo.

[ptc-1932745]

Just my $.02,

I would agree to you up to a point, IF PTC developed their animation program from scratch.

As far as I can remember, PTC bought the animation suite by buying another company. The hope here is that they will add 'hooks' to the software to provide seamless file translation, and then integrate the software into the core suite. I think that quite a lot of the functionality beyond CAD came this way (Mechanica, Windchill, Arbortext, Toolmaker, etc...). This is different than licensing technologies (constraint managers, solid modeling engines, etc...).

On a lot of fronts, I think PTC has had a lackluster (at best) track record in this regard, animation is no different.

If I was starting again today, I would rather have a core CAD/PDM system that manages the model, assembly, drawing database extremely well, and let 3rd parties provide tightly integrated solutions to specific missing features (like CAM, CAE, animation, rendering, etc...) through an open API and something like RPC's, DDE's or similar.



Christopher F. Gosnell

FPD Company
124 Hidden Valley Road
McMurray, PA 15317

[DeanLong]

Just my $.02 too...

Chris I agree with you also...up to a point. The core CAD/PDM solution with "tightly integrated third party add ons" was tried and it failed miserably. It was called SDRC. In fact it was that exact"promise" that SDRC touted that finally ousted PTC from being considered as Ford Motor Company's design software back in the day. That along with arrogance. But that is another story for another day.

With regard to Animation, I was once told by a PTC employee if I wanted to get animations done well...use something else. In fairness, the animation software has been left to wither on the vine for 15 years and is not in PTC's sweet spot. Too many dollars and effort creating WindKill to address the lacking modules and functionality.

[ptc-169947]

Hi all,

Two silly questions from a long time ProE user, novice CAD admin (we lost ours a while back).

I need to install a new license file that will allow us to test run WF5 while allowing us to continue using WF2 with 3.3 (unfortunately our current Production environment). We're hoping to move to Creo 2 before the end of the year.

1. If I don't know where the current license file exists (our configuration was originally set up so that Pro's launched from a load point), is there a way to find out? A file that has a path, something like that?

2. I was hoping to get a new license file that would allow us to keep our current WF2/3.3 configuration and give us the ability to test drive Creo 2, but was told by PTC that the license doesn't go back that far. Makes sense. Does anyone know if I can have a separate license file on a separate machine in order to run Creo 2?

Thanks,
Stefan

[ZacharyAlexande]

Hi Stefan,

1) Do you know which server your license management software is located?
There should be some tools, (LMTOOLS) for example, that will have a file
path to the license files. If you don't know which server it is located on,
this can be found on ptc.com/support.

2) To clarify, are you asking if having a Creo 2 license on a separate
licensing server from your WF 2 license will cause any issues? I do not
believe so. The two should not interact. I ran into a similiar issue with
WF5 and 2000i where we could not have both licenses in the same file nor
could we have them on the same machine.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Zack


Zachary D. Alexander
Operations Manager - RAPiDS
ProductSpace Solutions Inc.
Phone: 630-495-2999 Ex. 8104
Cell: 630-460-4905



On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:34 PM, Mueller, Stefan <
-> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Two silly questions from a long time ProE user, novice CAD admin (we lost
> ours a while back).
>
> I need to install a new license file that will allow us to test run WF5
> while allowing us to continue using WF2 with 3.3 (unfortunately our current
> Production environment). We're hoping to move to Creo 2 before the end of
> the year.
>
> 1. If I don't know where the current license file exists (our
> configuration was originally set up so that Pro's launched from a load
> point), is there a way to find out? A file that has a path, something like
> that?
>
> 2. I was hoping to get a new license file that would allow us to keep our
> current WF2/3.3 configuration and give us the ability to test drive Creo 2,
> but was told by PTC that the license doesn't go back that far. Makes sense.
> Does anyone know if I can have a separate license file on a separate
> machine in order to run Creo 2?
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan
>
>
>