[Tips] Animator Tips and Tricks

fredo6

Fredo

I was watching the tutorials and I saw what you did to create spinning wheels, can you please explain the sequence of voodoo you used to create this?

Say the diameter of the wheel is D (2.02 m), so the perimeter is Pi * D. This is the distance for a rotation of 360 degrees.
The offset of the forklift translation is 14 m. So you need 14 / (PI * D) rotation of 360 degree..

This gives the formula for the angle: 14 * 360 / 2.02 / 3.1416

Fredo

solo

smarty pants. I'm too old to learn these tricks.

wanniya

Is there any way to work with section plane animation?

fredo6

@wanniya said:

Is there any way to work with section plane animation?

This is coming in a new release tomorrow.

Fredo

Animator - Apparition.gif

Animator - Apparition 2.gif

pilou

Useful for magician!

fredo6

The picto is explicit

pilou

Can we add a Clip (or a movement) made in a previous session to the current session where an another is yet created ?

Say an object A (a Car) is on the screen and animated
A ball is an object B (a Ball animated) previously made in another session, can we add it to the car ?

fredo6

@pilou said:

Can we add a Clip (or a movement) made in a previous session to the current session where an another is yet created ?

Say an object A (a Car) is on the screen and animated
A ball is an object B (a Ball animated) previously made in another session, can we add it to the car ?

Any animation piece (i.e. sequence) created within a model can be integrated into a film, knowing that you can have many films within the same model. Think of a Sequence as a Component Definition in Sketchup. You can create instances of a sequence and insert them in the time line, change some parameters like duration, easing, ... (like you can scale a component instance in Sketchup). All sequences created in the model are accessible from the Insert buttons (for Movement, Cameras, Visual Effects, ....):

Animator - Insert sequence.png

Note that you can also insert a full film

Animator - Insert film.png

Fredo

solo

I'm still using Thea 1.5, but I cannot get animator to work with Thea, it works perfect with straight SU output but nothing happens with Thea, at first it just rendered the 1st scene, now when I click 'render animation' it does nothing, what am I doing wrong?

fredo6

@solo said:

I'm still using Thea 1.5, but I cannot get animator to work with Thea, it works perfect with straight SU output but nothing happens with Thea, at first it just rendered the 1st scene, now when I click 'render animation' it does nothing, what am I doing wrong?

Do you mean when you launch the rendering from Thea (not from Animator)?

Fredo

MANaboutTOOLS

Hi,

I am using a Mac and cannot change the scale of the timeline to zoom in. When I mouse over the scroll bar it says "Use Mouse-wheel +ALT to change scale"

The equivalent on the Mac is the "option" key. When I push the option key and touch scroll the Mac magic mouse it zooms the model and not the timeline.

Thanks
Kent
https://manabouttools.com

Screen Shot 2018-10-31 at 1.09.47 PM.png

fredo6

@manabouttools said:

Hi,

I am using a Mac and cannot change the scale of the timeline to zoom in. When I mouse over the scroll bar it says "Use Mouse-wheel +ALT to change scale"

The equivalent on the Mac is the "option" key. When I push the option key and touch scroll the Mac magic mouse it zooms the model and not the timeline.

Thanks
Kent
https://manabouttools.com

I don't have a Mac to test.

Could you try with Command or Ctrl to see what happens.

Fredo

MANaboutTOOLS

I tried as many combinations as possible. All just zoom the model.

Kent

fredo6

@manabouttools said:

I tried as many combinations as possible. All just zoom the model.

Kent

Can you at least scroll the timeline (mousewheel, no modifier) and scroll the tracks (Ctrl + mousewheel), [assuming you have enough tracks) ?

MANaboutTOOLS

I don't have enough tracks to test that. Will try tmrw.

MANaboutTOOLS

I changed a clip to make it longer so it brought up the scroll bars. I am unable to scroll the timeline with the mouse wheel. It always zooms the model window.

Kent

MANaboutTOOLS

Any keyboard shortcuts to zoom the timeline? Or any settings to key in a zoom value to get around this?

Thanks
Kent

fredo6

@manabouttools said:

Any keyboard shortcuts to zoom the timeline? Or any settings to key in a zoom value to get around this?

Thanks
Kent

Let's take things in order

without any modifier, putting the mouse cursor over the time, can you scroll the timeline?
with Option key pressed, and assuming you have enough tracks, can you scroll the tracks?
with Command key pressed, putting the mouse cursor over the time, what do you get?

MANaboutTOOLS

I can click-drag with the left button to scroll the time. I added enough tracks to test this.

No. Hovering the curser over the bar and gesturing with the magic mouse (scroll-wheel) zooms the model.
No. Zooms the model
With the mouse hovering over the scroll bar the time reads (for example) 25.5 s. If I press the command key the time then reads 25.50 s. And as above, mouse wheel gesture zooms model.

I hope this helps. Do you want a screen record?
Kent

MANaboutTOOLS

Here's a screenflow capture...