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Hi everyone! I’m sure by now many of you may have noticed that SolidWorks 2011 has been officially launched, which simply means that, although still in Beta 3 phase, it is now OK to acknowledge its existence and talk about it in public. Phew, what a relief, because some of us really struggle keeping something secret!  It will still be a while until it’s actually ready to use for production, but if you are on subscription, you can download and try the Beta version as early as today, if only to satisfy your curiosity.

I must admit this time around I haven’t been experimenting with the Beta as much as I would’ve liked. I guess you can say I’ve had a lot on my plate.   Anyway, I did get to test one or two things in the Beta version and was hoping I could find some time to blog about it.

I guess it is somehow obvious that since I had spent a bit of time playing with animations of lights in SolidWorks 2010 and rendering the animations in PhotoWorks, I would be curious about how all that would work out in SolidWorks 2011, now that PhotoWorks was out of the equation and PhotoView was the new rendering software. I guess in my mind I had this image of the “old” PhotoView and how it used to work as a stand alone application. I had no idea how it could replace PhotoWorks or even work out with the Motion Manager to produce a rendered animation, for instance.

So,  I tried it and was pleasantly surprised by all it can do now: you can add different kinds of lights and modify their intensity and color, apply special effects, modify the quality of the shadows they produce,  add decals, and much more  . In fact, even though I know it is PhotoView, the capabilities, the user interface, and the fact that it runs inside SolidWorks  makes me think a lot of PhotoWorks… only somehow simpler. It seems faster too, and more convenient. At least I don’t feel so threatened by this change, because what I already knew how to do in PhotoWorks translated really easily into this new PhotoView.

In this image you can see this extra tab called the Display Manager. From here you can access appearances, scene, lights, cameras and decals. If you look carefully, you will notice that each one of my lights exhibits two icons. The one of the left means that the light is turn on in SolidWorks, while the one on the right means that the light is turned off in PhotoView. Turning the lights on in PhotoView won’t show on the screen at all, because rendering takes place on a separate window.

 

So I turned all my lights in PhotoView and proceeded to create a preview render, like you see in the image. Oops! That’s not right!  Well, it makes sense that whatever settings I had for PhotoWorks won’t really apply in PhotoView, so I had to take a closer look to the lights and the new tools available in order to create a similar fog effect as I had in PhotoWorks.  By the way, while the rendering is taking place in this window, you can simply minimize it and continue working. It doesn’t leave you hanging there, waiting for it to be over. Isn’t that cool?

 

So I discovered that I could easily edit the PhotoView settings for each of my point lights. To achieve an effect similar to what I had before in PhotoWorks, I had to uncheck the option Shadows and check Fog. The fog option works in a way very similar to PhotoWorks, allowing the light to be visible as it would be in a room where there’s fog or light rain. 

 It took a little experimentation to find the right values to make this work, but the cool thing is that by leaving the preview render window open I was able to see the result of my adjustments to each setting instantaneously. I didn’t even had to check OK and or finish the command. I loved that!

 

After adjusting some of the settings of my two directional lights, I tried generating a final render using a better quality than the preview. You can adjust the quality of the preview and final renders, among other things, by accessing the PhotoView options. Notice how a second window opens on top of the preview one. In fact, even if you didn’t have the preview render window open to begin with, both windows will open whenever you do a final render. You should, however, still be able to minimize the final render window and continue working in SolidWorks. I think this part needs a bit of work, though. I was able to minimize the final render window, but the preview would not minimize. However, I was still able to open a different file and, after a few seconds delay, the preview window finally got out of my way. It wasn’t immediately, but it did happen.

 

Then I took a look at what happened to my lights inside the animation I had for this particular model. I noticed that all my lights were still off in PhotoView inside the animation and not only that, but the settings hadn’t been updated either.

 

I was a bit discouraged by this because that meant I would have to repeat all my work adjusting the settings, but then I realized that it makes sense that you can have lights for each animation that are altogether  independent from what you have for the model or for a different animation.  I also noticed that if I started a new study, then my lights would inherit the settings I had in PhotoView for my model. Interesting.

Here is another example of the use of fog in lights. This is a spot light that I added to the model of this flash light, remember? See? Too large values for fog distance and quality produce a beam of light that almost makes it look like a ray gun instead of a light. Lower values produce softer, more natural results in this case. It’s a bit of trial and error, I think, and it’s really nice to see it all change practically at the same time you do the changes.

And of course you can also edit the scene. This user interface seems to me like a nice mix between what it used to be with PhotoWorks and what’s new with PhotoView. It’s easy to use. Ah, did you notice that little pink handle near my cursor? I’m not sure what to call it, but if you click on it and drag it you can actually dynamically adjust the location of the floor in the scene.  That’s really neat. And it’s all taking place right in front of your eyes, in real time. No more guessing!

To be brutally honest with you, I was kind of bummed out that PhotoWorks was being replaced with PhotoView because I didn’t quite like the “old” user interface that was first introduced and because I felt kind of cheated for all the time and effort I put into learning PhotoWorks in the first place. I felt it had been a total waste of my time, but you know what? After checking it out I’m actually feeling much better. I really like what they did with it and I feel like my time spent with PhotoWorks wasn’t really a waste, that it will pay off after all. What do you think?

Dear readers,  you know I’m not the kind to rant about life or even cry “bug” when things don’t go my way with SolidWorks. Well, OK, there was that one time when I wondered about the bug in SolidWorks Motion, and recently when my brand new razors broke,  but other than that, well, you know I don’t usually do it. I just don’t rant… Those of you that have talked to my husband, don’t believe him… he’s just making up stuff…  He’s probably been under the sun for a long time… Yes, let’s go with that!

 Anyway, I guess this is sort of a rant, but mostly a “Huh?!”  moment.  It happened late the other night, when I was trying to complete the animations for my previous post, the ones for the flashlight and the holiday lights. I had already produced an animation using full frames (uncompressed), instead of a compression codec, simply because I liked the way it turned out: much better than with any of the codecs I tried before. I made some changes to the settings in PhotoWorks and was getting ready to render the animations again, but it was late and I was feeling tired. That’s when I saw the “schedule” button in the  Save Animation to File window and had the brilliant idea of scheduling the animations, instead. That way I could go to bed, rest and relax, and find them ready and waiting for me the next morning.  Perfect!

I must confess I had never in my life scheduled anything in SolidWorks. I was a bit worried at first, wondering how it would all get done, but went to bed, anyway, and had a hard time settling down, all full of anticipation for the animations that were being taken care by the Task Scheduler during the night. 

Now I know better. It was not anticipation what I felt, but the premonition of the horrors that awaited me. My AVI files were ready in the morning, but the results were less than I had expected. It seems that, for some reason, the animations had been produced using some sort of compression codec, instead of being uncompressed, like I had specified. They looked terrible! All full of streaks and not at all like the ones I had produced myself previously.  But how could this happen? 

My first thought was that, being as tired as I was the night before, I had made a mistake when I scheduled the animations and used some compression codec instead of choosing for them to be uncompressed, so I went to schedule them again and, after making absolutely sure I had chosen Full Frames (uncompressed), I clicked on a button named “View Settings” and discovered this:

That doesn’t look good, does it? So, does that mean that, despite whatever I may specify, my animation is being scheduled to be produced using  some undetermined codec and 84% compression? Based on the results, it sure looked like it.  Funny thing is that this doesn’t happen when you simply save the animation, when you don’t schedule it for later, and it seems like it only happens when you schedule AND choose Full Frames as the compressor. I checked it out using the Cinepak codec and it seemed to work fine, no settings had been corrupted and the results were as expected.

So, tell me do you use the Task Scheduler for your animations? I wonder if any of you has noticed anything like it. I’m using SolidWorks Premium 2010 SP4.0.  I know it can’t just be me… I mean, why would the Task Scheduler hate me so bad? Right? Right? Just say I’m right…

 

 

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good weekend and avoided making wacky searches you may soon regret. I spent some time of my own weekend toying around with PhotoWorks and the Motion Manager, trying to create some cool animations using lights.

I learned from the book Creating Animations with SolidWorks that using lights in animations is not really hard to do. Basically, you have your lights set up in SolidWorks, then you create a new motion study and the lights show up in the Motion Manager tree. Then, you can move them around, change their properties or even turn them on and off throughout the animation, creating all kinds of different effects.  Like with many other elements in the animation, every time you change something about a light, a key point will be created and you can drag the key point to a different location in the timeline, copy it, or even change its interpolation mode (the way it changes from key point to keypoint), just like you would do for a motor or a change in color or appearance.

So I started with this model of a flash light that I found at the 3DContent Central. The model was made by someone named Matthew Nestor and the moment I saw it I knew it was just perfect for my purposes. My idea was to add a spot light and locate it in such a way that the light seemed to be coming from inside the flashlight, like the light bulb was really on.  Notice the light in the image below.  I made it visible in SolidWorks so you can appreciate what I’m talking about.

 

While you don’t need PhotoWorks to add a spot light to the animation, you do need to have PhotoWorks for what I did with this particular light in this animation, so I’m going to assume you understand that none of this is useful to you if you don’t have PhotoWorks as an add-in and activated.

To create the effect I wanted with this particular light, I made it a fog light. What this does is create an effect similar to what it would be having some fog, mist, or light rain, allowing the beam of light to become visible. I won’t go into much detail on this, but you can learn more about how to use fog lights in the book PhotoWorks, a step-by-step self study guide, also available from the SolidWorks online shop.

 

If you notice, there are other lights, as well: there’s the ambient light, and a couple of directional lights that came with the choice of scene. I turned Directional 1 off and diminished the brightness of both ambient and Directional 2, so they wouldn’t overpower the spot light.  At zero seconds in the animation, ambient, spot1 and Directional 2 are on and Directional 1 is off.  At 1.5 seconds into the animation, however, Spot1 is now turned off, as you can see in the image.  As soon as you turn the light off  in the animation( by dragging the time bar to 1.5 seconds, selecting the light, right clicking on it and selecting Off), a key point will be created at 1.5 seconds. If you hover your mouse over this key point, you will see all the light’s properties at a glance.  The empty light bulb icon indicates the light has been turned off; if the light was on, the light bulb would be colored yellow.

 

Something else to keep in mind is that, unless you specify otherwise, the interpolation mode is always linear, which means that the light will go from on to off in a linear fashion, little by little, instead of turning off all of a sudden at 1.5 seconds. This will become an important factor for this animation. You’ll see that in a bit.

Due to the amount of time invested in rendering every frame for the animation in PhotoWorks and the fact that there’s 7.5 frames being generated for every second of animation, I meant for it to be very short. This particular one lasts less than two seconds, but it took close to 40 minutes to render and complete. I added an extra key point at 1.8 seconds, that was basically a copy of the one at 1.5 seconds. I just wanted to have at least a fraction of a second to appreciate that the light had, indeed, turned off.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will not be able to see the effect of the fog light on your screen when you calculate and run the animation in SolidWorks. You will only see it when you either render the image at a particular time in the animation or produce the animation as an AVI file using the  PhotoWorks buffer.  Taking this information into account, I set up all my options in PhotoWorks and test rendered the image at zero seconds and again at 1.8 seconds. I liked the way the renderings looked, so I decided to save the animation as an AVI file and this is what I got.

If you notice, right at the end of the video, after the flash light has turned off, it almost looks like it’s turned on again.  I tried a few things, tweaking the other lights in the animation and such, but it didn’t help, so I decided to change the interpolation mode for the Spot1 light, instead, from linear to snap. This new interpolation mode makes the Spot1 light turn off instantly, instead of linearly.

 

I rendered and produced the AVI file one more time.

Unlike before, now the flash light turns off instantly and it doesn’t look like it’s turned on again. I don’t know about you, but I think this animation looks a lot better than the previous one.

I know, I know… This is getting long for a blog post, but just before I go, let me show you just one more of my whimsical experiments with lights in animations. Some of you may remember this model. Some time ago I made a cute rendering of some holiday lights using PhotoWorks.  Now I’m going to use the same model to animate those holiday lights. As you can see in the image below, there are four point lights of different colors, strategically located to make it look like the light is actually coming from the light bulbs. I’ve made them visible for you to appreciate them; they appear in the graphics area as dots of color over the light bulbs. The black dots are lights that are turned off at that moment.  I’ve altered the color of each of them to make them look like holiday lights. 

As you can see, these are also fog lights, just like the previous one.

 

For my animation, I alternated turning a couple of them off and leaving a couple on every 0.5 seconds. First, the green one and the orange were on.

 

Then the red and the blue were on, while the other two were turned off. I used Snap as the interpolation method for all the lights.

 

I copied and pasted some of the key points to turn the lights on and of again and make the animation last for 2 seconds, then checked my PhotoWorks options, did sample renderings at zero and 0.5 seconds,  and produced the AVI file. This is what I got.

Not bad for an experiment, huh? There’s tons more to learn about lights and animations in SolidWorks. If you’re curious, check out the books offered by your local VAR or go to the SolidWorks online store and start experimenting today.

This is a very short post with the only intention of showing you a little video where I’m driving movement in an animation using only an angle mate. The video was also made made using SolidWorks 2010 Motion Manager and it’s the same model of the scissors that  I used before, but  it kind of didn’t fit well with the other two examples, so I decided to make a separate video about it. There’s also a little something on changing views during the animation. Hope you find it useful!

 

Hey everyone!  I know it’s been almost a month since the last time I blogged.  I also know quite a few of you still visit. Thank you!  Contrary to what the rumors may say, I’m still alive and this blog is still active, just not as active as before.  I’m sorry! Truth is this summer – this whole year – hasn’t been exactly one of the best ones for me and I’ve been seriously tied up with family responsibilities and other mundane activities. Bo-ring… I know.  Precisely for that reason I considered having a friend of mine as a guest blogger every now and then, just to keep the ball rolling during those times when I can’t come up with something to write about or when I just can’t find the time to do it, but he’s not convinced this is something he may want to do.  I guess I haven’t nagged enough.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I’ve been reading the new book Creating Animations with SolidWorks and I’m already halfway through it.  At the risk of sounding like a bad commercial, I must say that this book is really worth the time and effort.  It is very easy to read, straight forward, and will quickly provide you with the tools you need to create really cool animations without complicating your life.  

I think one of the most important things I’ve gotten from this book so far is the understanding of what making an animation in SolidWorks is really about. You see, I started the process backwards, attempting to understand SolidWorks Motion first, before learning about animation, and I was confused because all three kinds of motion studies use the same interface: the Motion Manager, although they are definitely not the same thing . This book has helped me finally understand why many of my previous attempts failed, and find different ways to get the movement right.

I’ve learned that sometimes you may get the results you need by dragging parts, sometimes you may drive the movement using distance or angle mates and yet some other times you may use one or several motors to accomplish the same.  And you can combine these elements too! Reading chapter seven I learned how to apply motors, how to turn them on and off throughout the timeline, reverse their direction, change their speed,  and change the interpolation mode to affect the way they operate, thus ultimately changing the way the whole animation looks like. I also tried one kind of motor I hadn’t tried before in an animation: an interpolated motor, driven by a tabulated set of values. This sort of motor is pretty cool, because it’s easier than trying to keep track of several key points throughout the animation, especially if you have other motors that you are trying to synchronize.

Anyway,  I put something together really quickly, trying to answer the second question from the same reader of the chain. He wanted to know how to animate screws so it looks like they are actually being screwed or unscrewed during the animation of an assembly exploding or collapsing. I tried two different things, based on examples I found in the book.  If you want to know more, I recommend you get a copy of the book Creating Animations with SolidWorks from your local VAR or the SolidWorks online store.

For the first method, I created a manual animation of the explosion of a pair of scissors. By manual I mean that I didn’t use the Animation Wizard, but dragged and positioned the components myself, instead.  Notice that, in order to do this I had to suppress a few of the mates in the assembly or else the components wouldn’t budge at all.  For the second method, I used the Animation Wizard to create an animation of the assembly explosion first and then tweaked the animation a bit.  In both cases, the rotation of the screw was achieved by using a screw mate. Please, forgive me because these two animations are extremely rough. I didn’t pay too much attention to details and views, etc., so they may not look as nice as they could had I spent a little more time working on them. Anyway, to watch the video simply click on the image below.