Is possible to Play an Animation (not a Sequence) in TWS from Creo Illustrate?

[TomasCharvat]

Hello,

the main reason, why I will use an animation, is to show exact mechanism pricipe in AR.

I have this mechanism builded in Creo Parametric (Mechanism Design) and exported to *.fra file, which can be imported to Creo Illustrate. But import from *.fra file make only an animation, which can not be recorded in TWS.

Principes to create Animations and Sequences are similar (at least in Creo Illustrate 4.xx), so is there any way how to play animation in TWS or is possible to convert whole animation to one step of sequence?

Thanks for every tip.

Tomas

[RolandRaytchev]

Currently seems that animation created using a .fra file is not supported yet. I requested some time ago info from PTC R&D and it was confirmed - that is not part of the current functionality yet.

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e.g. some answer regarding animation (not sequences) and .fra files:
“you're correct: we currently only support the animation of content through a sequence, and not a "simple" animation. This is in the backlog for later, but likely not very soon.
At this time, only sequences created with Illustrate are supported. Similarly, animations created with Creo View(*) are not supported either”

(*)Note: In Creo View you can create animation by importing of fra file!

So that currently only we can try to use some workarounds. But this will be not trivial.

The structure of the  .fra files contains a list of all components and their position defined via  matrix (4x4 homogenous matrix). With JavaScript we can calculate from the transformation matrix a Euler transformation means  x,y,z translation + rotations via x-axis, y-axis and z-axis. You can move a modelitem via setting of these 6 values. Of course, the calculation of the Euler values form the transformation matrix is not trivial because you have to consider the assembly structure. We  need pay attention that model items coordinates are in respect of the assembly which contains the component ( e.g. component with path 5/15/12 will be relative to the subassembly with Creo Parametric ids 5/15) 

How to define a animation engine in javaScript  you can see in the PTC IOT blog :

Javascript 3D animation engine (I hope is visible from here , if not then ,please, let me know to send it explicitly)

So  you can use the suggested animation enginge but you need first  to defined for all moved component an explicit 3d modelitem . The creation of 3d model items in thingworx studio is possible ony maually (not with javaScript) 

[JingMaoCheng · Accepted solution]

Hi Roland,

A workaround to that issue you can refer to the following steps to play animation in TWX Studio,

Step 1. Create Animation in Creo DAO、MDX or MDO
Step 2. export animation result to *.fra
Step 3. export Creo Assembly to *.pvz
Step 4. Open "1st" Creo Illustrate then import *.pvz
Step 5. Import animation file(*.fra from Creo DAO、MDX or MDO) in "1st" Creo Illustrate "Animation"
Step 6. Open "2nd" Creo Illustrate then import *.pvz --> Click "Sequence"
Step 7. Copy keyframe of "1st" Creo Illustrate then paste to the "Sequence" of "2nd" Creo Illustrate
Step 8. Preview animation result in "2nd" Creo Illustrate then publish to *.pvz
Step 9. Using *.pvz with animation @ TWX Studio

[RolandRaytchev]

Hi JingMaoCheng,

thank you for the suggestion. Yes your proposal will be a great solution. Unfortunately I have a problem with the point 7. in your instruction- unfortunately I did get a possibility to copy the Keyframe -so I  could not find the option to copy the keyframe.  I am sorry, may be I overlooked some thing - (I used Creo Illusrate 4.0 - the current supported and recommended version) 

[JingMaoCheng]

Hi Roland,

Please refer to the attached video for your reference.

[RolandRaytchev]

Thanks!

Ok what I see this is the functionality of the Creo Illustrate 4.2 - actually still not supported but it seems to work for some devices.

To summarize your solution there: we have to create 2 different types of figures -> animation and sequence in 2 different Creo Illustrate sessions and to copy an animation to a sequence step. I tested it and this   seem to work fine in 4.2 version but not in the 4.0. 

I tried also to copy an animation to a step which already contains some effects like move and flash but they will be overridden so seems that animation should be a separate step in the sequence.

So far is ok  and I am hoping that 4.2 engine is soon official supported with Studio

[JL_18346]

Thank you.  I've been looking for a solution to import animation from Creo.  Thanks again.