Animation software, need help!

Started by WKSouthwest, October 29, 2015, 08:33:26 AM

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WKSouthwest

Recently my company has been using keyshot more often. does anyone know a good affordable, and easy/quick to learn 3d animation software, in which you import solidworks cad models, rendered in keyshot into the 3d animation software. ??

Any advice would be useful :)

Thank you in advance!

theAVator

I think it boils down the goals of what you really want/need as an output.

The easiest/most obvious answer is KeyShot. KeyShot itself can do quite a bit of animation and version 6 expands on those capabilities. So, if you're going to assign materials/textures/colors in KeyShot, just keep it there and animate it there.

If you need to do something more complex that KeyShot just can't do, you could explore things like 3DS Max, Blender, possibly Lightwave or Unity, etc. There are probably others as well. The catch is, that if you are animating in these programs, you may as well color/texture/material assign in these applications. The issue being KeyShot is really more intended to be the final resting spot for the models, it's not robust for exporting to other programs and not really intended to be (hence no FBX export option). Of the 3 export options, I think (don't quote me on it) only OBJ can export materials. So 2 of your options strip away the texturing you've done, why do it if it's for naught? Compound this with the fact that you have to take your source program, Solidworks it sounded like, export it to a format KeyShot can use, export it from KeyShot to one of the three formats, then re-import it into another program, then render/export your animation. That's a lot of export/import steps and could really mess up your model/data, especially if you don't have control over the original modeling.

In Summary:
1. Check out KeyShot's animation features, check out some samples, see if would work for what you need. If yes, then Yaaaay!
2. Find a different program that does what you want it to do, learn it and use that one from beginning to end.
3. If you absolutely must, try the method you asked about, but you really need to do your homework on what filetypes and options will work the best, will export and import the best, and play around to get the results you want.