Animation difficulties with Keyframes and Translations

[jinjamu]

Hi,
I am working on an animation whereby I wish to recreate a specific natural event, more or less a rock collapse.  I have photogrammetric models of a specific site showing before and after a rock collapse, I have identified specific rock components, which I isolated as distinct 3D models, in the "before" and "after" phases, and now I wish to animate a simulation of the collapse showing the specific rock components "falling" from their "before" position to the "after" position.  I'm starting to think that keyshot is not the ideal tool for this, but I will just quickly explain what I have tried and where I am getting stuck, maybe I am missing something.
To start, I captured the translation parameters for a rock component by manually moving/rotating it from the "after" position to overlap the same component in the "before" position
First I tried the keyframe method.  Unfortunately this does not work like the tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKH3qvC5p_g) demonstrates, when I move the model part, the translation and rotation boxes remain at zero, and the "pivot point Center" selection is greyed out. I was also hoping I could simply enter the translation parameters in the "move tool" window which pops up when creating the keyframe, but this does not work at all.
I alternatively tried to use normal animations, a translation animation for X,Y and Z transformation and one rotation animation each for the X, Y and Z rotation angles transformation.  The animated model part ends up in a totally different location to the replicated manually moved model part when I do this.  I have tried all possible combinations of Axis (local/global) and Pivot Point (center/origin) in the move and in the animation windows, to no avail.  I find it strange that using the EXACT SAME transformation parameters one cannot recreate the same transformation.  From a few other tests I did, it seems like the issue is how the rotation movement behaves, and I came to this conclusion because I observed that a rotation around an axis (say X) when pivot point is set to Center also changes the translation parameters of the other 2 axis (e.g. Y and Z), even though the model simply rotates around its own axis, which behaviour I cannot understand at all.
I'm happy to supply more details/screenshots etc  if any of the above is unclear.
Thanks
John

[mattjgerard]

oof, yeah. You should be looking into something that deals with physics sims for something like that. while KS does have animation ability, its still being refined, and just not as capable as something like blender or C4d that can handle the physics much better.

[jinjamu]

Thanks for your reply, confirms my thinking.  I was hoping I would save having to learn yet another software! 

[mattjgerard]

So, here's the thing- you could try the "settle" option in the move tool. I've been using it to fill boxes with random stuff, and so if you had all your objects in place, properly built and import it, you might be able to try that.

[theAVator]

Yeah, the settle might be a god way to see the action simulated, but if he wants the stuff to end in a particular place/orientation, then settle wouldn't provide that ability. I think it just randomly simulates based on collision, right?

From a few other tests I did, it seems like the issue is how the rotation movement behaves, and I came to this conclusion because I observed that a rotation around an axis (say X) when pivot point is set to Center also changes the translation parameters of the other 2 axis (e.g. Y and Z), even though the model simply rotates around its own axis, which behaviour I cannot understand at all.

You're not the only one, this drives me crazy too. I just don't get how it makes sense.

[mattjgerard]

Yeah, the settle might be a god way to see the action simulated, but if he wants the stuff to end in a particular place/orientation, then settle wouldn't provide that ability. I think it just randomly simulates based on collision, right?

Yep I would assume so.